The Red King - Michael A. Martin [98]
“The bedrock is completely destabilized,” Norellis said, his tone edging almost toward panic. “We can’t land. And the caves the survivors are hiding in are too kelbonite-rich to let us beam them out without pattern enhancers.”
“We’ll go in, then,” Keru said. He turned toward T’Lirin. “You, me, and Kent. We’ll each take a pattern enhancer. If we can persuade the survivors to stay in one place, we ought to be able to beam them out safely.”
The shuttle veered to port, throwing them all toward that side of the craft. As they righted themselves and recovered their seats, Waen shouted an apology. “Sorry. A huge gout of magma was erupting right below us.”
Keru felt as though his insides had been sliced open, pain from his recent chest wound. “How do we get to the survivors?”
Norellis pointed through the forward window toward a cave opening on one of the buttes. The entrance was narrow, and the pathway leading to it had already crumbled away, no doubt because of all the recent seismic activity. “Line-of-sight transport. We beam ourselves just inside the opening, one at a time. Risky, but it’s our best option.”
Keru nodded, then looked quickly at T’Lirin. She nodded as well.
“I will go in first,” she said. “I’ve traversed the volcanic plains of the Womb of Fire on Vulcan. I believe this will be easier.”
Moments later, T’Lirin had successfully beamed over to the cave opening, followed quickly by Norellis. Keru was the last to go, feeling the beam engulf him in its disorienting shimmer.
The air outside the shuttle was oppressively hot and acrid-smelling, and Keru immediately began to cough as he made his way deeper into the caves. The situation reminded him briefly of the stand he and the other Guardians had made on Trill, when political terrorists had attacked the caves of Mak’ala.
He heard the echoes of footfalls coming from T’Lirin and Norellis up ahead, as well as a variety of screams and shouts beyond. He rounded a corner to find a broad chamber filled with a chaotic and frightened crowd of refugees. Most of them were members of the bovine native species that the Neyel had apparently enslaved long ago, along with representatives of a number of other sentient races, including Neyel, mixed among them.
As T’Lirin tried to explain to the refugees what would happen during the beam-out, Keru and Norellis arranged the tall, stanchion-style transporter pattern enhancers in a triangular formation that encompassed much of the wide chamber. They couldn’t transport everyone out at once; they would have to do so in three groups.
Norellis took the first group, and while they seemed to flicker and linger a bit too long during their dematerialization, Keru was heartened to hear Kent’s voice over his combadge a few moments later. They had reached the shuttle successfully.
The ground shook and groaned, as if the very bones of the planet ached.
“You’d better get out of there quickly though, Ranul,” Norellis said over Keru’s combadge. “These buttes are starting to collapse around us out here.”
Keru looked to T’Lirin. “You go next.”
The Vulcan woman shook her head. “Respectfully, sir, even though you are the leader of this mission, you must go next.” She pointed at him.
Keru was about to disagree, when he saw that she wasn’t pointing at him, but at his chest. He looked down to see blood seeping through his tunic. His blood. His wound had reopened.
“See you on the other side,” he said, then joined a group of lowing, frightened Oghen natives within the triangle formed by the pattern enhancers. A moment later, a shimmering curtain of energy enfolded him, and he felt a momentary sensation of freefall.
Then he materialized in the shuttle, along with the refugees. Nurse Kershu turned toward him and her eyes widened when she saw the blood on his tunic.