Synthesis - James Swallow [14]
At Dakal’s side, the other member of the away team, a Benzite engineer named Meldok, shot her a look. “Suit failures are a statistically uncommon cause of death for a Starfleet officer,” he noted, his slightly nasal voice echoing inside his own helmet. “You’re much more likely to perish from any one of a number of other causes, such as—”
Ranul saw Fell’s face go pale and leaned in, clapping a hand rather harder than he needed to on the back of Meldok’s torso plate. “Less talk, more walk,” he snapped. “We’re on a tight timetable, people.” To underline his point, he snapped the seals shut on his own headgear and nodded to Vale, who did the same. Fell was the last to complete the process, and Ranul gave her a smile he hoped was reassuring.
Dennisar was at the airlock hatch, working the controls. “Ready.”
“Ready,” called Bolaji from the cockpit. A forcefield sprang up, sealing off the crew compartment as atmosphere bled swiftly away.
Ranul felt the suit stiffen slightly and heard the silence creep in as the air around them was drawn off. He looked down at his gloved hands, and for a moment, an old and hatefully familiar pain turned over inside him. He didn’t like wearing these things any more than Fell did.
The suit’s faint scent of tripolymer and life-support circuits reminded him of death. His lover Sean Hawk had been killed outside the Enterprise by the Borg, in a suit just like this one; he had died tasting the same artificial tang of recycled air. Ranul sighed and pushed the thought away.
“Do it, Chief,” Vale was saying, her voice issuing from the communicator near his ear. Ranul looked up as Dennisar opened the hatch in the Holiday’s roof.
Outside, weak starlight caught a slow blizzard of debris and, beyond, the distended shape of an ingot of hull metal.
Ranul pushed forward, returning to the moment and the job at hand. “I’ll go first,” he said.
Olivia had brought them as close as possible to the wreckage, reducing the distance they had to travel to less than five meters. Vale pushed out of the hatch and made a slow tuck-and-roll maneuver, turning herself so the alien wreck was below and the Holiday was above. Her gravity boots thudded dully and adhered to the hull. Fell came next, and Dennisar was last, the three of them joining Keru, Meldok, and Dakal where they crouched low on the curve of gray metal.
The Benzite was sweeping a tricorder back and forth. “Interesting construction,” he noted. “The fuselage is not a single form but actually a series of smaller, articulated frames, doubtless capable of multiple-geometry configurations.”
Vale looked across to the shuttle’s canopy, where Bolaji was visible. The pilot looked up and gave her a wave. “The exposure clock is running, Commander. I’ll give you the three-minute warning if you’re not already back by then.”
“Copy,” she replied. “We won’t stay out here a second longer than we have to.”
Dakal pointed toward a massive tear in the alien ship’s hull. “We should make our entry here, ma’am.” The gouge in the metal was like a ragged-edged wound, as if a huge talon had raked the craft in passing and opened it to the void.
“Lead on,” she ordered, and the Cardassian set off with Dennisar pacing him, the wary Orion holding the compact shape of a heavy phaser at his hip.
Vale went in after them, activating the suit’s built-in lamps to get some illumination. For a moment, she felt disoriented. Instead of something that could readily be defined as a “corridor,” the team found themselves drifting in an elongated internal space, choked with a snake’s nest of conduits and cabling that ranged forward and aft. There was nothing that seemed to be a floor or a ceiling and no regularity to it. Dead-eyed panels, perhaps systems consoles, poked from snarls of thick tubing like boles in tree trunks. In some places, the conduits had burst, spilling fluids that had flash-frozen into fat knots of chemical ice. Some of the cables were severed, the razor-sharp ends showing bright coppery cores.
“This could be a service