Q & A - Keith R. A. DeCandido [57]
Kadohata reported, “I’m reading no life signs, aside from the lower life-forms we encountered the last time.”
Leybenzon lowered his weapon but did not holster it. After all, they hadn’t detected the predators last time. He took up position near Picard.
Pointing to one of the cavern openings, Kadohata said, “It’s this way, sir.” Leybenzon was grateful. He did not recall which was which—the openings all looked alike in the perfect symmetry of this canyon.
Leybenzon pointed two fingers at de Lange and three at Stolovitzky, and they both nodded. The lieutenant took point, moving toward the cavern with Picard, Kadohata, and de Lange, Stolovitzky covering the rear.
At the mouth of the cavern, Leybenzon stopped and took out his own tricorder. He detected the same mineral composition in the cavern walls he did the last time and nothing else aside from a thirty-meter-long twisting path.
Kadohata confirmed that. “Not picking up anything unusual, Captain.”
Picard nodded. “Not surprising. Proceed, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.” Leybenzon put his tricorder away and slowly walked into the cavern, phaser raised.
Just like last time, Leybenzon found himself unable to move forward after he reached the ten-meter mark. This time he summoned up every erg of willpower he had and tried to lift his left foot.
Nothing.
“Perhaps if we all try at once,” Kadohata said.
Leybenzon turned to look at her. “Sir?”
“Last time, each of us tried individually. What if all five of us try to walk through at once?”
With a shrug, Leybenzon looked to the captain.
“Make it so,” Picard said with a nod.
All five officers then stood abreast in the tight confines of the cavern and stepped forward.
Suddenly, Leybenzon felt his stomach drop, like he was on a g-coaster, and he tried to scream—
—out to his troops, “Firm up! Don’t let those Jem’Hadar bastards break the line!”
The trenches of Chin’toka IX had gotten muddy in the rain, but Zelik Leybenzon wasn’t overly concerned. All they had to do was defend the installation on the ground. The Jem’Hadar couldn’t just bombard the place from orbit because there was a Founder in the installation’s brig, and the Jem’Hadar wouldn’t vaporize one of their gods.
So they were attacking on the ground, hiding behind the tree line and taking their shots, slowly moving forward toward the trenches the Starfleet soldiers had dug in front of the installation. Zelik had hoped he’d be able to outlast the Jem’Hadar, but there seemed to be an endless supply of them, where he had only a hundred troops left. Thirty-four had been fatally wounded.
Zelik had always found the Jem’Hadar and Vorta’s slavish devotion to the Founders to be their weak spot. Now it was the reason Starfleet even had a chance to secure Chin’toka IX. Of course, it also painted a big target on the planet, as the Jem’Hadar would stop at nothing to retrieve their god. Zelik was a good soldier. He was ordered to hold this installation, so that was what he was doing.
The only thing Zelik had ever really believed in was himself and his skills with weaponry. He trusted nothing and nobody else.
Not even the people under him, which was as it should be, because they weren’t doing as he asked. “I said, firm up!” There were seven holes in the line that the Jem’Hadar could exploit.
Phaser fire whined over his head, and Zelik cursed the incompetents that Starfleet had been sending him lately. Getting experienced ground troops had become increasingly difficult. As year five ground into year six, with no obvious end in sight, the troops got greener and greener. The cost in lives was appalling, but it was far better than the alternative. Zelik had seen what the Dominion had done to Betazed, reducing a once-great world to a wasteland, and he would die before he saw that happen to another Federation world.
Or, rather, he’d kill to prevent it.
From his right, Deng said, “Sir, the Jem’Hadar have deactivated the proximity grenades!”
Zelik noted the panic in the young soldier’s voice, but simply nodded and said, “Okay.”
“Okay? Sir, we were