Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [6]
What happened next happened so quickly that for Archer, it all blurred together.
An alien face—deep bronze, with round, luminous, living eyes—appeared overhead amid the stacks of feed containers. A male, given the size and bulk; the low-ceilinged loft forced him to crawl on hands and knees. He scrambled to the edge of the loft and looked down at the landing party.
Glowered, actually, but Archer’s observation was overwhelmed by the jubilant thought: Alive! He’s alive and strong enough to talk!
And, indeed, the alien opened his lipless mouth and let go a sound. An unarticulated sound, more like a low growl that began deep in his broad chest and left his throat as a shriek…
…As he came springing down, arms outstretched, one webbed, many-fingered hand grasping, its target Hoshi’s throat.
The communications officer screamed as the alien leapt atop her, knocking her down hard—so hard that, despite the protection provided by her helmet, Archer could hear her skull thud.
Weakened or not, the alien produced a small object—a utility knife, Archer thought—and lifted it upward with the clear intent of disconnecting the oxygen hose that fed from the body of the suit to Hoshi’s helmet.
Archer had no way of knowing whether the knife could pierce the strong fiber of the hose, of knowing whether the alien could do her any serious harm. He responded out of pure instinct—drawing the phase pistol from his utility belt, putting his gloved finger on the trigger, aiming and preparing to fire.
But before he could do so, another’s phase blast, painfully precise, caught and illumined the alien in the instant before he could bring down the blade.
He shuddered, hesitated in the air a half second, then fell heavily to one side, allowing the terrified Hoshi to scrabble backward, crablike, on her arms and legs.
Archer and Reed reached Hoshi’s side at the same time; she sat up, grimaced, and rubbed the back of her skull—in vain, since her helmet kept her from any hands-on contact with the injured area. “I’m fine,” she told the captain ruefully. “I tried to say that we were here to help, but the alien…he didn’t seem sane.” She looked up at the crouching Reed. “Thanks for stopping him.”
“I didn’t shoot,” Reed admitted, awkwardly; he actually flushed. “I didn’t have time.”
The three humans glanced over at the fallen man, then at T’Pol, who bent over him with her scanner. Her phase pistol was already reholstered, her air already that of the impassive scientist; yet there was the subtlest catch in her tone as she looked up at Archer and announced:
“Dead, Captain. Given his weakened state, my stun blast killed him.”
Two
THE SILENCE on the shuttlepod ride back to the ship was palpable.
The team had failed abysmally in its mission: The woman in Phlox’s care had died despite all of the doctor’s desperate ministrations; and every attempt by the quartet of Archer, Reed, T’Pol, and Hoshi to locate and rescue other survivors had ended in their discovering a recently deceased individual. Eventually, T’Pol’s scanner no longer registered any life-forms other than birds and insects. Standing beneath Kappa Xi II’s glorious bright sun, Archer had been forced to admit defeat. An entire civilization was dead, and nothing they had done had stopped it.
The thought flashed in Archer’s mind: I’m sorry, Dad. We did what we could.
Phlox had begged for permission to bring two of the bodies aboard: those of the man and the woman who had been found together in the medical facility while the woman was still alive. Archer had reluctantly agreed, knowing Phlox would maintain them under the strictest quarantine. The landing party had waited while specially designed containers were beamed down, and Phlox followed careful procedures to place the bodies inside. The sealed containers would go through decontam along with everyone else. In addition, Phlox collected tissue and blood samples from other victims for comparison.
Yet even if Phlox and his techs managed to solve the mystery of what had killed those on the island