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“No,” Sañuul said. “Bring it to the hospital. I want Dr. Dolahn to conduct an autopsy.”

“That fool wouldn’t know which end to cut open!” Calwei said, at which many laughed.

Sañuul even smiled at that. “Maybe. But he’s supposed to be an expert on silicon-based life, and I want to know where this thing came from.”

I walked up to her as the four men continued toward the hospital and the remaining three told the others of our adventure. “We know where it came from, Sañuul.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re going to start calling me that, too.”

Bowing my head respectfully, I said, “If you do not wish to be called that—”

“I don’t,” she said quickly.

“In any case—Commander —it is a monster shii. It came, presumably, from other shii.”

“Maybe. But Dolahn was right about one thing—it’s a lot bigger than any of the other shii that we saw on the way out there. Or the ones I saw from orbit, for that matter. It might be some kind of mutation or something else. I want to know what.” She took a deep breath. “In the meantime, I think we’ve all earned a night off. First thing in the morning, I want to work out a new schedule with you and J’Roh—with that thing dead, we should be able to get back on track.”

“Of course, Sañ—Commander.”

“Meanwhile, I’m going to follow the corpse to the hospital, get this looked at.” She pointed at her injured arm.

As she walked toward the Gallamite’s chamber of horrors, I called after her. “Commander, if you wish—would you join us?”

She stopped, turned, and frowned at me. “Join you where?”

“Outside my tent. I intend to celebrate our victory with a bottle of Saurian brandy that Entorr thinks he’s been keeping secret. I would be honored if the Sañuul would join us.”

She sighed. “I’m not the Sañuul!” Then she smiled. “But I’d be equally honored to join you. Thank you, Kejahna.”

And she did join us. We drank long into the night. Mostly, Sañuul listened as we regaled each other with stories. Some of them were even true, though they were less so the more we drank. It was very good Saurian brandy, and Entorr only sulked for a little while when I told him to bring it out.

Ah, but your mothers are no doubt distressed at this drinking and carousing so soon after talking of fighting and death.

But a victory should be celebrated. So should a miracle. And Commander Sonya Gomez—the Sañuul—is most definitely a miracle.

Thanks to her, I should be home to see you soon, my son. I look forward to it.

With all the love I have,

Your father,

Kejahna

First officer’s log, Commander Sonya Gomez, planet Sarindar, Stardate 53281.2

Today at noon we will be doing our first test of the annular confinement beam. This is the most important test we’ve done so far, as the ACB is an important component of the SA. The ACB is similar to the kind used in transporters, but much more powerful by several orders of magnitude. It will be used to clear a path of vacuum through the planet’s atmosphere, through which the payloads of chimerium will be accelerated with an eight-nanosecond high-warp pulse that will drive them up to the refinery.

I’ve been a bit concerned about this particular aspect of the SA, as it’s the most experimental, inasmuch as no one’s ever (to the best of my knowledge) created an ACB on this scale. It’s also a very good thing that I—or at least someone from Starfleet—was assigned to this project before this test was done. The power systems for the ACB were not sufficiently recalibrated for the increased power. The nature of the ACB is such that, as the beam increases in size, you have to increase the power output logarithmically, not exponentially. If they’d built this up to the original specs, as mandated by my predecessor, the best-case scenario would be that the ACB would burn out and shut down. Worst-case: the entire SA would’ve exploded in a fiery mess, people probably would die, and the project would have to start over from scratch.

The original schedule the project had been on when I