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The kick didn’t do much to damage it—though it felt like it had done plenty to my foot—but it wound up being enough for the shii to lose its balance and start scrabbling around on the dish some more. Under other circumstances, I might have found it amusing, watching it try desperately to maintain some kind of grip, its arms flailing as each attempt failed.

I was standing in the middle of a concave dish at night on a crystal planet facing a creature out to kill me. I was armed with nothing more than a torn Starfleet uniform and a battered copy of someone else’s religious text—and my brain, which I had always relied on in the past. However, it was failing me now. There had to be some way to keep the creature still long enough for me to get off the dish, but I was damned if I could think of it. I needed to get the rifle back . . .

Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh

. . . with the rifle slung over my shoulder, I started to climb. I am grateful that my great list of weaknesses does not include a fear of heights. Climbing the ladder was not difficult. In fact, I had done it several times before, during the project. No, the fear that gripped me had solely to do with why I took the climb. But I continued to climb. And I tried not to think about the scream I had heard. I also was hearing odd scraping noises.

I got to the top of the dish and I saw that the monster was trying to attack Commander Gomez. For her part, Commander Gomez was trying to get away from it. She was bleeding from her face and her uniform was torn and ripped.

As soon as she saw me, she shouted at me to shoot the monster . . .

First officer’s log, supplemental

. . . I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to see anyone as I was to see Razka at that moment. I screamed at him to shoot the shii. Once he did that, everything else would come into place.

He held up the rifle . . .

Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh

. . . but once again I failed to shoot. I was programmed, it seemed. Nothing I could do could make me push the button. Not even the constant shouting of “Shoot it!” from Commander Gomez. Not even the monster finally being able to slash at both her face and her torso. I saw her strangely colored blood flowing from two wounds on her face now, as well as her side, and still she shouted, “Shoot it!” And still I could not pull the trigger.

Garbage in, garbage out.

I knew for sure that I was not someone who could fire a weapon. I was, however, still the aide to the head of the project. So I would do what I’d been doing. I would help her.

Commander Gomez was about seventy meters down the dish and about ten meters to my left. I could not trust my ability to throw the rifle to her. I could, however, trust gravity. I laid the rifle down on the surface of the dish and let it slide toward the center . . .

First officer’s log, supplemental

. . . the pain in my side was the worst I’d felt since that mugato sliced me open on Neural five years ago, but I managed to crawl the twelve meters to where the rifle was going to wind up. Razka wasn’t a fighter, and I respected that—I just wished he had realized it before that thing sliced me open.

Speaking of which, it was still trying to maintain its grip on the dish, and was hoping to use me as an anchor. It dug one claw into my boot heel as I was crawling over toward the rifle. I managed to yank my foot out of the boot, which sent the thing sprawling back down toward the center, once again trying to get some kind of footing.

The salty taste of my own blood from the two cuts on my cheeks, pain slicing through my entire torso like a phaser set on burn, I grabbed on the sonic rifle, rolled painfully onto my back, and saw the shii getting ready to pounce on me again.

It was almost funny—as it leapt through the air, I saw that my boot was still wedged in its claw.

I fired the rifle.

The