CHAPTER 11: Chaos
The rescuer called out "Stand back" as the phaser fire line had come within six inches of finishing the hole being cut in the outer casing of the passenger car as McCoy looked on. When it was within a half inch, the panel came crashing into the cabin, and landed with a thud, as the last of the metal buckled under the weight.
The rush towards the new exit began with a crush of the remaining passengers, as the rescue continued.
Lenny watched as those at the front began dematerializing in the transport beams. "They must have finally gotten a solid lock with those human egg scramblers" muttered McCoy, as he began to wait his turn for the inevitable beam out. "Oh Joy" he mumbled.
Kirk had arrived, and was meticulously scanning each car for his friend. He slowed now, to almost zero hover speed, as he went from car to car. "McCoy" he called out, as his craft was now just inches from each demolished car on the mountainside; each car being eliminated from his search pattern.
As he looked about the landscape, he saw the devastation of the crash: Smoldering ruin, smoke, fizzle material oozing from cars along the mountainside, and the sheer wreckage of this crash. Many of the trees and scrub brush were now on fire, hindering the rescue efforts.
He could now see the beam ins, and beam outs of rescuers using the transporters beams of the rescue transports, to get into better position to access each car. The topography of the land, as well as the position of each car on the mountainside, was being scanned and used for reference points for the beams.
Then Jim noticed one car in a very peculiar situation, and instinctively knew; if Lenny was anywhere, that car was the one he'd be on. He saw the transport hovering over the wreckage and noticed the access hole, but the car was lying precipitously close to the edge of a staggering drop, and almost appeared to be moving.
The transportation process was taking too long, and the constant vibration of shuffling weight on the floor was beginning to make its mark on the movement of the car on the cliff face. Suddenly the level four transports directly over many of these cars, began to lose power. These transports, it appeared, were under attack by something too!
Jim sped up as he watched the process, as he knew he was running out of time. He hovered his bike right over the windows, scanned quickly, and locked eyes with McCoy. "Jim!" he shouted, the hope in his eyes giving him away.
There was no time to think about what was happening, Kirk couldn't believe it; what was going on with these ships and the train? His thought gave way to fear as he saw that happened next.
"McCoy!" Jim shouted. Lenny looked up to see Jim pointing straight down, and his bike dropping like a rock. He moved into action and was now hopping across the car away from the remaining passengers, to the window where he had seen the man drop to his death earlier.
He began kicking out the glass to avoid more cuts when he looked up through the glass in time to see the lights of the transport flicker, and go out. Things seemed to go in slow motion for Lenny now, as the transport began to move downward in the air, the heavier end of the craft crushing the compartment where the rescue was under way. Now the remaining part of the transport began coming down at horrifying speed as it crushed the car all along its length!
McCoy spun his head around just in time to see the bottom of the transport coming down on him. He quickly turned back to the window, tucked his arms, and jumped!
The free-falling transport crushed the top of the car just as McCoy's head had cleared the window on the bottom. The screams could be heard inside the transport as he watched the transport and the entire car now free falling only 30 meters behind him. "Grab my hand!" Kirk said as the bike came up underneath him. McCoy grabbed past Kirk's hand, and onto his shoulder with a grip of steel, and swung in behind him.
Kirk gently spooled up the engine, and veered left and away from the falling wreckage, and they both watched in horror, as the car, the transport, and everyone aboard continued its plummet into the abyss with loud explosions from this crash, and now others as these transports went down in flames!
Neither of these young men could have imagined this scene unfolding before them, as the other transports, and their passengers, crashed into the cars, and all of them rolling down the side of the mountain. People were spilling out of the car's windows now, and being crushed to death under the pure carnage taking place.
Large pine trees were being broken off like matchsticks, some piercing the metal of both the train cars, and the transports, as they toppled over and over each other on the way down. It might have been entertaining, had it been one of the "feelie" movies now popular with teens, but this was reality they were witnessing, and it was beyond their ability to comprehend it!
"Alicia!" McCoy shouted; in the life or death struggle, he had forgotten about her, and now had the overwhelming urge to jump off the bike, and run to her, had his senses not gotten the best of him in the reality that he was now a thousand meters above the abyss.
"Jim, we have to find her, and help these people" he shouted. Jim shouted back, "I think we need to wait until this all stops". "What else could we do", McCoy mumbled back. There really was nothing they could do, until this all ended, so they sat there, hovering in silence as it all unfolded before their eyes.