The Red King - Michael A. Martin [90]
As others quickly followed the Neyel onboard, the Starfleet personnel tried to maintain some semblance of order. DesYog tried to ignore the terrified faces that were pressed against the forward window; he saw Neyel children struggling to stay upright among the larger adults, as well as representatives from at least four other races.
“Oh, shit,” Hachesa said next to him, staring at a screen. The word meant “bride” in desYog’s native Skorrian, but he knew that Fo had picked it up from humans, for whom the term had a far less pleasant definition.
Hachesa turned toward him, his olive-colored nose turning a vivid purple. “There’s a tidal wave about to hitting.”
Over the din of the crowd, Hachesa tried to get Sortollo’s attention to warn him, even as desYog readied the shuttle to take off. Readings showed the swiftly gathering wall of ocean water to be two kilometers away, but closing fast. Too fast.
We have to leave now, he thought, but a quick glance aft told him that the ship was still not full to capacity. Still, they couldn’t wait any longer.
DesYog punched the red alert button, and a warning klaxon went off, adding to the already cacophonous din inside the shuttle. “Lieutenant, we have to get up now,” he yelled back toward Sortollo, though he couldn’t even see the sallow-skinned Martian in the crowd.
The wave was getting close. DesYog sent a prayer to his goddess, teneYa-choFe; he was thankful, at least, that none of the Starfleet personnel had been pulled outside. Then he tapped the control for the shuttle’s hatch, pulling it closed.
Behind him, he heard screaming, but he couldn’t tell if it was from those in the shuttle, someone caught in the hatch, or those outside.
As he pushed the shuttle upward, a tremendous clamor filled the air. He saw several Neyel and others clawing at the front of the shuttle as it rose, their fingers and tails catching at any crevice they could find, terror etched deeply onto their hard gray faces.
And then the wall of water struck the shuttle with immense force, and desYog felt himself—and the craft—tumbling over and over again, the lowering sun blocked out by brackish purple-gray seawater, all other sound crushed beneath a deafening roar.
Clutching the crash-straps that bound him tightly to his seat, desYog prayed to teneYa-choFe again, that the shields would hold, and that they would be able to save the scant handful of Oghen’s populace they had brought aboard.
Not to mention themselves.
Chapter Sixteen
VANGUARD
K’chak’!’op felt completely at home within the Vanguard habitat. This discovery greatly surprised her. She had been among the first set of Titan crew members to be dispatched to the artificial world, alongside Deanna Troi, Christine Vale, Engineer Crandall, Counselor Huilan, Dr. Cethente, and about a dozen others.
Frane, Titan’s most prominent Neyel guest, had hand-picked a number of the Neyel military personnel who had accompanied them as well, and now everyone was busy trying to revive the sleeping world. The previously uncooperative Neyel commandos had apparently been much easier to convince to help once they had been shown the destruction taking place on Oghen, and the specific plans that Titan and the Romulans had formulated to save as many of its inhabitants as possible by transporting them to the Vanguard habitat.
K’chak’!’op worked steadily at the ancient computers, utilizing her foremost pair of legs, and all twelve of the tentacles that protruded from her head segment. The system was so archaic as to be laughable; it would be up to her and the team of engineers to retrofit the habitat’s internal structure as quickly as possible to make certain it was up to the stresses of towing, warp travel, and passage through the spatial rift through which Titan had initially arrived here.
According to the chatter on the comm system, another huge wave of Neyel refugees had just been beamed in