"Alex!"
To Kana, it all happened in horrifying slow motion. She saw the doors slide apart, and she saw the explosive the Vyar had placed. She saw it detonate, the fireball spew forth, the bulkhead contort and buckle and finally tear apart. She saw shrapnel tear through Atherton and the marines, killing them just instants before the flames scorched their bodies to the bone. She saw the wave of white-hot flame roll down the corridor, unstoppably, rushing to engulf her defenceless host.
She stepped in as quickly as she could. The shockwave and the heat of the explosion knocked Alex off her feet, and in the split second between that happening and the flames reaching her, her eyes filled with the hellish fire of her other self's power. The flames washed harmlessly over Kana.
She stood in the blackened, ruined corridor. Three tortured skeletons were her only company. For a moment she couldn't even sense Alex's presence within her, and cold hard fear gripped her heart. Had she been too slow? Had the heat, or the shock, or the fright been enough without the flames? Or had, perhaps, Alex been struck by a piece of the destroyed bulkhead?
Her panic disappeared when she finally made contact with her host. She was unconscious and very weak, but still with her. Kana had never been more relieved.
That feeling, in turn, swiftly gave way to fury. This was the second time the Vyar had nearly killed her better half. The last time, she had let them get off easily, but this time she would not be so forgiving. Unimaginable power churned within her. She was reticent to use it most of the time, partly to help keep their secret, and partly because she had found it more fun to solve her problems with a bit of brains and creativity than a snap of her fingers.
Revenge could be a very creative endeavour.
She stepped into the engine room. The explosive device had been shaped, its force directed down the corridor, and the engineering compartment itself had escaped unscathed. Like all engine rooms on all Daedalus-class ships, this one was a five-level affair that sprawled over a quarter the length of the secondary hull. The warp core shot up through the centre of the chamber, normally a pulsating tube of violet light, now cold, dark, and inactive. Dozens of tall computer consoles lined the walls, and wherever there wasn't a bank of computers a piece of complicated machinery protruded from the bulkheads. The beating heart noise of the warp core, the hum of computers, and the various hissing, crashing, squeaking, groaning noises the other machines made all mixed into a hideous din that rattled throughout the cavernous room.
From their positions on the upper levels, the Vyar opened fire on her as soon as she stepped into the engine room. Energy bullets rained harmlessly around her. Kana snarled, tensed, and made a slashing motion with her right arm. A surge of red light filled the engine room, and when it faded again she was the only living thing left. The Vyar had simply vanished.
Calmly, Kana crossed to the nearest of the functioning consoles. She had no idea how to restart the Daedalus' engines herself, and neither did she care to find out. She pressed the intercom – one of the few systems that hadn't been affected by Matsura's prefix codes – and called, "Engine room to the bridge."
"Bridge, Matsura here. Nain, you have control of the engine room?"
"Evidently."
There was a momentary pause. "Internal sensors recorded some strange energy readings in your vicinity. Is the core intact? Where's Chief Atherton?"
"Dead."
"What happened?"
"A Vyar trap," she said tonelessly. "I'm the only survivor. I need someone down here to do Atherton's job."
"Understood, Lieutenant. Williams is on her way."
Kana flicked off the comm and settled into a chair while she waited for the navigation officer to get down here. While she waited, she thought dark thoughts, formulated cruel and brutal forms of revenge. She still hadn't worked out what she was going to do with the Vyar. They could wait in the pocket universe with her yoyo until she came up with something.
Thinking about that, she retrieved her yoyo: she didn't want the Vyar to have anything to entertain themselves with while they were in limbo.
Lieutenant Williams stepped gingerly into the engine room several minutes later. She was pale, having passed the corpses outside the door. She and Atherton had been shipmates for a long time. Kana could sense her pain. For once, she was even sympathetic. Nearly loosing Alex had made her a little more empathetic.
"What happened?"
"There was a bomb, rigged to go off when we opened the door. Can you restart the warp core?"
Williams nodded and focused on her task. "I should be able to."
While she worked, Kana hovered in the background and played with her yoyo, still thinking. Alex wouldn't want her to take revenge. Well…she would say that she didn't want her to take revenge. Kana knew a little better than that. Her host had a mean streak of her own, her own evil. Unlike Kana's, Alex's was a very cold, practical, inhuman evil. Most of the time it was dormant deep inside of her. When it emerged…ouch. Even Kana found Alex in a dark mood intimidating.
If Alex ever decided to take revenge on someone, she would do it by creeping up behind them and slitting their throat. There would be no game, no art, just a dispassionate murder, and it wouldn't make her feel any better – although she wouldn't regret her actions, either.
Kana wasn't like that. Death was a release. A decent revenge should delay the victim's death for as long as possible. It should make death something that they looked forward to, would embrace when it came, and then deny them it for a long time.
She was still no closer to knowing what to do with the Vyar.
It wasn't just Alex she was taking revenge for, she decided. Atherton and the marines could have their share of it, too. She hadn't known them, hadn't cared about them, but she would happily hurt someone for them.
"How did you survive?"
"What?"
Williams had her head and upper body stuffed into the reaction chamber of the warp core, tinkering with something. She asked again, "How did you survive? The explosion, I mean."
"I was a lot further down the corridor."
"Oh. Then you didn't see…?"
"No."
Williams was silent for another minute, and then she continued, "He was a good man. John, I mean. I…I didn't know the marines, but I'm sure they were good men, too. It's so stupid! Why…"
"Are people dying?" Suggested Kana, impatience creeping into her tone. "We're in battle with the Vyar. People die in battle. They're dying right now. And they will keep dying until you get this ship functional again, and we can get out of here."
"You're not very sympathetic."
"Not in the least."
Williams pulled herself out of the warp core. For a moment, Kana thought that she was going to have an out-and-out argument with her right now, but fortunately the navigation officer was more professional than that. She pressed a button on the master warp core control console, and the antimatter reactor came back to life.
"That's it. We have main power."
The Daedalus surged with renewed strength. Things moved quickly after that, following precisely the plan that Captain Matsura had laid out before they had embarked on this operation. Jezzelis and Wickersham in the armoury manually targeted the ship's phase cannons and blasted the docking clamps, umbilical cords, and airlocks that joined the starship to the Vyar station. As soon as they were floating free, helmsman McCallum fired the impulse engines, and the ship escaped into free space, manoeuvred so that it was on a course back for outpost VX-41, and leapt to warp. The other Starfleet vessels followed the Daedalus into subspace. The Klingons elected to remain behind: there were still Vyar to shoot!
They had done it. The Starship Daedalus was back in Federation hands. Mission accomplished.