The Brave and the Bold Book Two - Keith R. A. DeCandido [38]
Beaming down to Slaybis IV from the Liberator, however, was more like watching the world dissolve and then dissolve further.
Rain pelted his face while intense wind slammed into his chest. Instinctively, his right arm went up to protect his eyes. Within seconds, his clothes were soaked through, sticking to his flesh. He was almost afraid to open his mouth to speak.
He squinted under his upheld arm—which was doing precious little to protect his eyes—and saw Chakotay and Tuvok in a similarly bedraggled state.
Just as he was about to scream out if there was shelter nearby, the wind started to die down and the rain lightened.
Hudson lowered his arm. “That Malkus Artifact doesn’t do things halfway, does it?”
Chakotay looked up just as the clouds started to clear. “This is definitely not natural.”
Within seconds, Hudson had to raise his arm again, this time to shield his eyes from the rays of Slaybis that now beat down on its fourth planet’s surface. “I hate to think what this is doing to the planet’s ecosystem.”
“Nothing good, I can tell you that.”
“I just wish Torres could’ve put us down indoors.”
“Look around, Hudson,” Chakotay said, indicating the area with one arm. “There’s not much indoors left.”
Following Chakotay’s gesture, Hudson took stock of his surroundings. He saw no evidence of habitation—whether people were dead or evacuated was impossible to tell—but plenty of evidence of damage. None of the nearby buildings were especially tall, but all were distressed to some degree or other: broken windows, scarred facades, missing doors and parts of roofs. What especially concerned Hudson were the cracks in many of the buildings’ superstructures. Assuming they were constructed from the usual building materials—plastiform, rodinium, and the like—they shouldn’t have cracked like that. Yeah, Hudson thought after a second, and the Geronimo’s hull shouldn’t have buckled from the inside, either.
Chakotay turned to Tuvok, who had taken out his Starfleet tricorder. “Can you get any readings?”
“Give me a moment, please,” Tuvok said as he peered down at the instrument. “I’m afraid the tricorder’s response time is not what it was.”
Hudson smiled, but made no apologies. When Tuvok came on board, Mastroeni had confiscated the tricorder, and wouldn’t give it back to the Vulcan until after McAdams had literally taken it apart to look for bugs, transmitters, or anything else that could be used against the Maquis. It turned out to be clean, and McAdams—a moderately skilled tinkerer—had managed to put it back together, but apparently not at one hundred percent.
Sweat was now intermingled with the rainwater on Hudson’s brow. Amazingly, there was very little humidity in the air, given the recent precipitation, but the temperature had shot up. Where moments ago he had felt like he was in the tropics during monsoon season, now he felt like he was in the middle of the desert.
“I am not reading any Andorian life signs in the immediate vicinity.”
“Damn,” Chakotay muttered. “Did he move?”
“Unlikely. I am also not picking up any Starfleet combadges in the vicinity—however, there is other evidence to suggest that both Captain DeSoto and Tharia ch’Ren are present. I am receiving the emissions from the Malkus Artifact, as well as a lowlevel signal from a Starfleet transponder. Both are emanating from an area that has no life readings—or any other significant readings of any kind.” He looked up. “The logical deduction would be that Tharia is, as promised, using a forcefield. However, while the forcefield is able to keep out the relatively passive signals generated by bioreadings and combadges, it cannot deter the more active signals of the artifact or the transponder.”
Chakotay nodded. “DeSoto probably brought