Operation: Pandora
Now
The makeshift glider crumpled as he hit the updraft and instead of being pulled with it, he cast it off. This left him with only one direction to travel, down, and he knew with certainty that before he reached the frothing rapids below he would be travelling at terminal velocity. The fall would be certain death. If he made like a starfish, he might create enough drag to slow him somewhat, but he would still be crashing into the water with enough force to shatter titanium. As he threw himself into the dive he reflected that he had at least completed the objective which was all that mattered.
Although he wasn’t exactly expendable, he knew that some sacrifices had to be made and his only comforting thought as the rushing wind sounded in his ears was that he no longer had any family to care for. That had already been taken care of by the very people who had previously resided in the wrecked dome twenty kilometres away. A bleeping from his tricorder informed him that he was just five kilometres from the retrieval site but he was in the wrong position to do anything about it.
Eleven hours earlier...
The type-10 shuttlecraft flew through the lower atmosphere as Jackson Cole struggled back into the pilot’s seat and tried to regain attitude control. The navigation system was completely fried and the solar flares which he’d hoped to use to blind the facility’s sensors to his approach had been far more dangerous than his intelligence had projected. They had fried almost all his systems and left him in a tin can dropping like a stone at hundreds of kilometres an hour. As the shuttle dropped below the clouds, Cole saw the massive dome built into the cliff face and aimed the shuttle for it.
Too late he saw the telltale streak of a torpedo of some kind and without impulse engines he was left with barely-operational manoeuvring thrusters. They weren’t going to be enough and he braced himself for the impact. Whatever systems had remained active died as the low-yield torpedo slammed into the unprotected shuttle. Cole was thrown into the nearest bulkhead and remained pinned as the inertial dampers whined in protest at the punishment they were forced to endure. The shuttle hit the ground hard and Cole was mercilessly tossed onto the deck.
As he picked himself up and gathered his wits, he noticed the torpedo hadn’t detonated, but had merely got itself wedged in the hull. The fact that it was now glowing meant that he had no time to waste and grabbed a phaser, medical kit, tricorder and the emergency transponder, all in one easy to carry pack. The hatch had been jammed shut with the force of the impact and he was compelled to break through the fractured transparent aluminium viewport in the forward section to escape. He made it eleven metres before the torpedo detonated, fracturing the shuttle and sending shards of titanium in his direction. Even from his prone position on the ground, covered by the emergency pack, Cole was still battered by the debris and he felt several pieces pierce his durable outfit and embed themselves in his flesh.
Gritting his teeth with the pain, he sat up and took out the larger pieces, using the tricorder and osteo-regenerator to repair the damage, and then the dermal regenerator to finish the job. It wasn’t pretty, but then he wasn’t a doctor so it no surprise. He’d downloaded a topographical map of the terrain before the shuttle’s systems were fried so his tricorder, which he’d switched off, had been unaffected. He put the pack on his back and, wincing with every step, hiked toward his goal, the dome still visible even from seventeen kilometres away.
Time seemed to pass ever slower as Cole made his way through the subtropical forest. He must have screwed up with the medical kit because his leg had just started to ache, a deeper ache than mere pain. He was used to pain, his high threshold being one of the criteria for joining the Federation Marines. Cole knew that he had a concussion from the fall and possible damage to his leg that the tricorder hadn’t picked up or he misinterpreted, but he was faring well enough.
The twin suns shone high in the sky as the dome got closer, and Cole thought he was in the clear until he felt the tricorder vibrate. He’d set it to alert him that way in case the audible bleeping alerted anyone. He dove for cover as two hovers flew overhead toward the crash site. Sighing in frustration, he cursed the Marine Intelligence Corps for yet another blunder as they had assured his team that the most weaponry this group had were a bunch of Klingon disruptors. The fact that they had hovers probably meant that they had a damn sight more than a few disruptors.
Another insistent vibration from the tricorder made him reach for it and glance at the display. There were eight people, in four groups of two, moving in his direction. They had him surrounded and he knew he couldn’t outrun them so he decided to do what he did best. He withdrew the fully-charged phaser from the pack and buried it, carrying just the tricorder and the phaser up a tree to give him a good vantage point. It wasn’t long before the first duo were in range.
‘He’s here somewhere, find him.’
‘The hovers’ sensors could be wrong, Gallik probably miscalibrated them again,’ the other one whined.
‘He’s a wimp, not an incompetent,’ the first one replied. ‘He survived the crash, and there’s no telling when the others will show up looking for him so we have to be gone.’
‘Is the ship ready for launch?’
‘It will be.’
Cole closed his eyes and muttered a vile curse toward the Corps. He opened them and thumbed the phaser to its lowest kill setting. He was not going to give these people a chance to come and get him, not after the way he’d seen them behave. He squeezed off two shots and the men were dead before they hit the ground. Unlike the standard beam phaser, these pulse phasers did a much better job, though they did drain the power pack faster, but you couldn’t have everything.
The other six were rushing toward him so he climbed higher into the tree. It made firing accurately a little harder but he was a competent marksman. He needed only six shots to deal with them, but they were going to be a little cautious knowing that two of their number had just been killed. Cole took a deep breath and exhaled, picking off each one as he or she entered his line of sight.
Five down but the sixth was nowhere to be found.
He heard a slow whine approach and twisted to see a grenade heading toward him.
‘Oh crap!’ he muttered and, dropping the phaser, hurled himself fifteen feet toward the ground.
The tree exploded seconds later he was battered by twigs, branches, and splinters. Not one to wait, the last remaining soldier moved in, attempting to kill him before he could recover. Cole had trained in some of the toughest scenarios with some of the toughest people in the galaxy, so he was used to hurting as he fought. The soldier forced him to the ground as he got up but in doing so lost his own footing and Cole kicked out, catching the soldier off-guard. He jumped up before the soldier could regain his stance and pummelled him before grabbing a protruding branch from the ground and slamming it into him.
The soldier dropped to the ground like a lead weight and lay still. Cole picked up his phaser, aimed and fired. The mission was now a distant secondary goal for him, as the name of the wimp finally registered in his conscious mind. Gallik was a computer genius, and it had been his virus, programmed into the colony’s defence system, which allowed the terrorists to land their team and obliterate the lab, after taking what they needed. He planned on taking the same approach with one minor difference. He wasn’t going to be taking anything, just leaving something.
Cole retrieved his pack and continued walking toward the giant dome, which he now knew to be the hangar for a vessel of some kind, a vessel which could not be allowed to take off, especially not with Gallik or his boss on board.
Then he collapsed.
Five hours earlier...
Cole opened his eyes and looked around. He had no idea what caused him to lose consciousness but once again he could hear hovers overhead. A plume of smoke still rose behind him from the wreckage of the shuttle, but he was actually on higher ground as the terrain rose to form a number of hills before levelling out as one approached the massive canyon that dominated the landscape on this continent. Not wanting to attract the attention of the hovers which were searching for him, he decided against trying to activate the emergency transponder, lest the hovers had subspace transceivers on board. His only means of getting off the planet would be destroying the dome and stealing the vessel within, or getting a signal to the Darwin.
Pulling himself to his feet, Cole felt lightheaded and looked down at his leg. He saw an ugly welt with some kind of stinger embedded in his skin. Carefully removing the stinger, he examined it with the tricorder and smiled grimly. It was venomous but not fatal, at least not to him. Dropping the stinger into the medkit, he made a mental note to have ship’s doctor create a nice little addition to their group’s arsenal. It could come in handy. The dome was not less than ten kilometres away and he should be able to reach in less than two hours if we walked at his usual brisk pace, and provided the hovers didn’t find him. Although the dome was built into the opposite side of the canyon, he could see the bridge that spanned it and would use that to cross, removing it once he was done.
After almost an hour, the tricorder vibrated. Cole glanced at it and saw that the hovers were now moving in his direction. Settling the pack in a more comfortable position, and securing the phaser and tricorder, he set off at a brisk run. He had only four kilometres to go and should make it under twenty minutes at this speed. From the sound of the hovers he knew for a certainty that they had locked onto him and would be in range long before he reached the bridge, cutting him down. Knowing that the game was up, he stopped, ripped open the pack and activated the emergency distress beacon, then secured everything he would need to his person, stuffing into pockets or attaching it to the utilities belt with the phaser and tricorder.
Just as he finished doing so, the first hover came in low, almost vertically from the canopy. Cole whipped his phaser out and fired at the unprotected pilot. The man tumbled out of the cockpit and hit the ground with a sickening crunch, followed a moment later by the hover itself as it ploughed into the ground at angle. It was clearly made well since it didn’t explode or come apart. With a wry smile, Cole clambered into the cockpit and found that the engines were still active, albeit idling. He back up the hover and let it settle into a horizontal position before taking it up into the air and heading toward the dome.
Three shots were fired from the hovers following him and all connected with the hull of his appropriated craft. It was unlikely that he would make it to the dome, so he turned back in a sweeping curve and used his own hover’s pathetic phase cannons to strafe those following him. The lead hover wasn’t expecting it and it was unable to avoid the direct hits, exploding in spectacular fashion. The remaining two swerved to avoid the burning debris and one skimmed over the canopy, stalling its engines and tumbling to the ground.
A speaker spluttered into life and a familiar voice called out to him. ‘Mister Cole, I would appreciate it if you didn’t destroy such expensive property.’
‘I’ll make you a deal, I’ll stop destroying your hovers if you destroy your ship waiting for launch,’ Cole replied as he attempted to shake the final pursuer.
‘I think not,’ the voice replied.
‘That’s what I thought, see you in a few minutes.’
‘Indeed.’
Cole wondered about that comment before seeing three more hovers emerge from behind the dome.
‘Wonderful.’
He aimed his hover low and slowed it so that the newcomers overshot him, one of which ploughed into his lone pursuer, sending both burning vehicles to the ground. He looked over his shoulder as the last two hovers turned and increased speed to intercept him before he reached the holographic dome. Both began firing almost continuously and Cole was able to avoid the majority of the shots, but one hit the engines and his hover shuddered.
Cole aimed the hover for the dome and increased to maximum speed. His pursuers were too far behind to catch him and when his hover passed a few metres above the canopy on the this side of the canyon, he jumped, landing on something that broke his fall, at least temporarily. He craned his neck just in time to see the hover disappear into the holographic dome.
Seconds later a massive explosion rocked the ground as the dome abruptly vanished, leaving behind the unvarnished truth. A Starfleet runabout, equipped with some unusual modifications, sat on a landing pad. The hover had ploughed into the pad’s structure, buckling it and sending the runabout onto the deck below, killing whoever was working there. The explosive shockwave from the runabout’s impulse engines caused a rockslide that buried what was left of the not-so-secret lab and the two hover drivers clearly decided to leave their boss to die, heading in another direction, presumably to a waiting ship. Before they did so, they fired at the bridge, disintegrating it. They then flew directly over the canyon and utilising some unusual updraft, took themselves higher and away.
The shockwave had dismounted Cole from his branch and he tumbled down until he hit something hard and metallic.
Two hours earlier...
‘Damnation!’ Cole cursed as he limped toward the remains of the subspace beacon.
Something or someone had destroyed it. He could only hope that the signal had been received. All that remained for him to do was reach the retrieval site on the other side of the canyon, and without the bridge, that was going to be extremely difficult. He had found the remains of one of the hovers further back and made a makeshift glider from the titanium hull. If he could reach the updraft, he would be able to gain enough height to reach the other side of the canyon and then rescue would only be a matter of time. But he had a long walk ahead of him with the glider on his back and a broken leg.
Ten minutes earlier...
A run-up was going to be impossible with the broken leg, so Jackson Cole walked to the edge of the intact bridge section, and jumped.
Now
The makeshift glider crumpled as he hit the updraft and instead of being pulled with it, he cast it off. This left him with only one direction to travel, down, and he knew with certainty that before he reached the frothing rapids below he would be travelling at terminal velocity.
As he threw himself into the dive he reflected that he had at least completed the objective which was all that mattered.
A bleeping from his tricorder informed him that he was just five kilometres from the retrieval site but he was in the wrong position to do anything about it.
As the water rushed toward him, he felt himself blacking out, though it was accompanied by some kind of tingling energy that he somehow knew was familiar.
Now
The makeshift glider crumpled as he hit the updraft and instead of being pulled with it, he cast it off. This left him with only one direction to travel, down, and he knew with certainty that before he reached the frothing rapids below he would be travelling at terminal velocity. The fall would be certain death. If he made like a starfish, he might create enough drag to slow him somewhat, but he would still be crashing into the water with enough force to shatter titanium. As he threw himself into the dive he reflected that he had at least completed the objective which was all that mattered.
Although he wasn’t exactly expendable, he knew that some sacrifices had to be made and his only comforting thought as the rushing wind sounded in his ears was that he no longer had any family to care for. That had already been taken care of by the very people who had previously resided in the wrecked dome twenty kilometres away. A bleeping from his tricorder informed him that he was just five kilometres from the retrieval site but he was in the wrong position to do anything about it.
Eleven hours earlier...
The type-10 shuttlecraft flew through the lower atmosphere as Jackson Cole struggled back into the pilot’s seat and tried to regain attitude control. The navigation system was completely fried and the solar flares which he’d hoped to use to blind the facility’s sensors to his approach had been far more dangerous than his intelligence had projected. They had fried almost all his systems and left him in a tin can dropping like a stone at hundreds of kilometres an hour. As the shuttle dropped below the clouds, Cole saw the massive dome built into the cliff face and aimed the shuttle for it.
Too late he saw the telltale streak of a torpedo of some kind and without impulse engines he was left with barely-operational manoeuvring thrusters. They weren’t going to be enough and he braced himself for the impact. Whatever systems had remained active died as the low-yield torpedo slammed into the unprotected shuttle. Cole was thrown into the nearest bulkhead and remained pinned as the inertial dampers whined in protest at the punishment they were forced to endure. The shuttle hit the ground hard and Cole was mercilessly tossed onto the deck.
As he picked himself up and gathered his wits, he noticed the torpedo hadn’t detonated, but had merely got itself wedged in the hull. The fact that it was now glowing meant that he had no time to waste and grabbed a phaser, medical kit, tricorder and the emergency transponder, all in one easy to carry pack. The hatch had been jammed shut with the force of the impact and he was compelled to break through the fractured transparent aluminium viewport in the forward section to escape. He made it eleven metres before the torpedo detonated, fracturing the shuttle and sending shards of titanium in his direction. Even from his prone position on the ground, covered by the emergency pack, Cole was still battered by the debris and he felt several pieces pierce his durable outfit and embed themselves in his flesh.
Gritting his teeth with the pain, he sat up and took out the larger pieces, using the tricorder and osteo-regenerator to repair the damage, and then the dermal regenerator to finish the job. It wasn’t pretty, but then he wasn’t a doctor so it no surprise. He’d downloaded a topographical map of the terrain before the shuttle’s systems were fried so his tricorder, which he’d switched off, had been unaffected. He put the pack on his back and, wincing with every step, hiked toward his goal, the dome still visible even from seventeen kilometres away.
Time seemed to pass ever slower as Cole made his way through the subtropical forest. He must have screwed up with the medical kit because his leg had just started to ache, a deeper ache than mere pain. He was used to pain, his high threshold being one of the criteria for joining the Federation Marines. Cole knew that he had a concussion from the fall and possible damage to his leg that the tricorder hadn’t picked up or he misinterpreted, but he was faring well enough.
The twin suns shone high in the sky as the dome got closer, and Cole thought he was in the clear until he felt the tricorder vibrate. He’d set it to alert him that way in case the audible bleeping alerted anyone. He dove for cover as two hovers flew overhead toward the crash site. Sighing in frustration, he cursed the Marine Intelligence Corps for yet another blunder as they had assured his team that the most weaponry this group had were a bunch of Klingon disruptors. The fact that they had hovers probably meant that they had a damn sight more than a few disruptors.
Another insistent vibration from the tricorder made him reach for it and glance at the display. There were eight people, in four groups of two, moving in his direction. They had him surrounded and he knew he couldn’t outrun them so he decided to do what he did best. He withdrew the fully-charged phaser from the pack and buried it, carrying just the tricorder and the phaser up a tree to give him a good vantage point. It wasn’t long before the first duo were in range.
‘He’s here somewhere, find him.’
‘The hovers’ sensors could be wrong, Gallik probably miscalibrated them again,’ the other one whined.
‘He’s a wimp, not an incompetent,’ the first one replied. ‘He survived the crash, and there’s no telling when the others will show up looking for him so we have to be gone.’
‘Is the ship ready for launch?’
‘It will be.’
Cole closed his eyes and muttered a vile curse toward the Corps. He opened them and thumbed the phaser to its lowest kill setting. He was not going to give these people a chance to come and get him, not after the way he’d seen them behave. He squeezed off two shots and the men were dead before they hit the ground. Unlike the standard beam phaser, these pulse phasers did a much better job, though they did drain the power pack faster, but you couldn’t have everything.
The other six were rushing toward him so he climbed higher into the tree. It made firing accurately a little harder but he was a competent marksman. He needed only six shots to deal with them, but they were going to be a little cautious knowing that two of their number had just been killed. Cole took a deep breath and exhaled, picking off each one as he or she entered his line of sight.
Five down but the sixth was nowhere to be found.
He heard a slow whine approach and twisted to see a grenade heading toward him.
‘Oh crap!’ he muttered and, dropping the phaser, hurled himself fifteen feet toward the ground.
The tree exploded seconds later he was battered by twigs, branches, and splinters. Not one to wait, the last remaining soldier moved in, attempting to kill him before he could recover. Cole had trained in some of the toughest scenarios with some of the toughest people in the galaxy, so he was used to hurting as he fought. The soldier forced him to the ground as he got up but in doing so lost his own footing and Cole kicked out, catching the soldier off-guard. He jumped up before the soldier could regain his stance and pummelled him before grabbing a protruding branch from the ground and slamming it into him.
The soldier dropped to the ground like a lead weight and lay still. Cole picked up his phaser, aimed and fired. The mission was now a distant secondary goal for him, as the name of the wimp finally registered in his conscious mind. Gallik was a computer genius, and it had been his virus, programmed into the colony’s defence system, which allowed the terrorists to land their team and obliterate the lab, after taking what they needed. He planned on taking the same approach with one minor difference. He wasn’t going to be taking anything, just leaving something.
Cole retrieved his pack and continued walking toward the giant dome, which he now knew to be the hangar for a vessel of some kind, a vessel which could not be allowed to take off, especially not with Gallik or his boss on board.
Then he collapsed.
Five hours earlier...
Cole opened his eyes and looked around. He had no idea what caused him to lose consciousness but once again he could hear hovers overhead. A plume of smoke still rose behind him from the wreckage of the shuttle, but he was actually on higher ground as the terrain rose to form a number of hills before levelling out as one approached the massive canyon that dominated the landscape on this continent. Not wanting to attract the attention of the hovers which were searching for him, he decided against trying to activate the emergency transponder, lest the hovers had subspace transceivers on board. His only means of getting off the planet would be destroying the dome and stealing the vessel within, or getting a signal to the Darwin.
Pulling himself to his feet, Cole felt lightheaded and looked down at his leg. He saw an ugly welt with some kind of stinger embedded in his skin. Carefully removing the stinger, he examined it with the tricorder and smiled grimly. It was venomous but not fatal, at least not to him. Dropping the stinger into the medkit, he made a mental note to have ship’s doctor create a nice little addition to their group’s arsenal. It could come in handy. The dome was not less than ten kilometres away and he should be able to reach in less than two hours if we walked at his usual brisk pace, and provided the hovers didn’t find him. Although the dome was built into the opposite side of the canyon, he could see the bridge that spanned it and would use that to cross, removing it once he was done.
After almost an hour, the tricorder vibrated. Cole glanced at it and saw that the hovers were now moving in his direction. Settling the pack in a more comfortable position, and securing the phaser and tricorder, he set off at a brisk run. He had only four kilometres to go and should make it under twenty minutes at this speed. From the sound of the hovers he knew for a certainty that they had locked onto him and would be in range long before he reached the bridge, cutting him down. Knowing that the game was up, he stopped, ripped open the pack and activated the emergency distress beacon, then secured everything he would need to his person, stuffing into pockets or attaching it to the utilities belt with the phaser and tricorder.
Just as he finished doing so, the first hover came in low, almost vertically from the canopy. Cole whipped his phaser out and fired at the unprotected pilot. The man tumbled out of the cockpit and hit the ground with a sickening crunch, followed a moment later by the hover itself as it ploughed into the ground at angle. It was clearly made well since it didn’t explode or come apart. With a wry smile, Cole clambered into the cockpit and found that the engines were still active, albeit idling. He back up the hover and let it settle into a horizontal position before taking it up into the air and heading toward the dome.
Three shots were fired from the hovers following him and all connected with the hull of his appropriated craft. It was unlikely that he would make it to the dome, so he turned back in a sweeping curve and used his own hover’s pathetic phase cannons to strafe those following him. The lead hover wasn’t expecting it and it was unable to avoid the direct hits, exploding in spectacular fashion. The remaining two swerved to avoid the burning debris and one skimmed over the canopy, stalling its engines and tumbling to the ground.
A speaker spluttered into life and a familiar voice called out to him. ‘Mister Cole, I would appreciate it if you didn’t destroy such expensive property.’
‘I’ll make you a deal, I’ll stop destroying your hovers if you destroy your ship waiting for launch,’ Cole replied as he attempted to shake the final pursuer.
‘I think not,’ the voice replied.
‘That’s what I thought, see you in a few minutes.’
‘Indeed.’
Cole wondered about that comment before seeing three more hovers emerge from behind the dome.
‘Wonderful.’
He aimed his hover low and slowed it so that the newcomers overshot him, one of which ploughed into his lone pursuer, sending both burning vehicles to the ground. He looked over his shoulder as the last two hovers turned and increased speed to intercept him before he reached the holographic dome. Both began firing almost continuously and Cole was able to avoid the majority of the shots, but one hit the engines and his hover shuddered.
Cole aimed the hover for the dome and increased to maximum speed. His pursuers were too far behind to catch him and when his hover passed a few metres above the canopy on the this side of the canyon, he jumped, landing on something that broke his fall, at least temporarily. He craned his neck just in time to see the hover disappear into the holographic dome.
Seconds later a massive explosion rocked the ground as the dome abruptly vanished, leaving behind the unvarnished truth. A Starfleet runabout, equipped with some unusual modifications, sat on a landing pad. The hover had ploughed into the pad’s structure, buckling it and sending the runabout onto the deck below, killing whoever was working there. The explosive shockwave from the runabout’s impulse engines caused a rockslide that buried what was left of the not-so-secret lab and the two hover drivers clearly decided to leave their boss to die, heading in another direction, presumably to a waiting ship. Before they did so, they fired at the bridge, disintegrating it. They then flew directly over the canyon and utilising some unusual updraft, took themselves higher and away.
The shockwave had dismounted Cole from his branch and he tumbled down until he hit something hard and metallic.
Two hours earlier...
‘Damnation!’ Cole cursed as he limped toward the remains of the subspace beacon.
Something or someone had destroyed it. He could only hope that the signal had been received. All that remained for him to do was reach the retrieval site on the other side of the canyon, and without the bridge, that was going to be extremely difficult. He had found the remains of one of the hovers further back and made a makeshift glider from the titanium hull. If he could reach the updraft, he would be able to gain enough height to reach the other side of the canyon and then rescue would only be a matter of time. But he had a long walk ahead of him with the glider on his back and a broken leg.
Ten minutes earlier...
A run-up was going to be impossible with the broken leg, so Jackson Cole walked to the edge of the intact bridge section, and jumped.
Now
The makeshift glider crumpled as he hit the updraft and instead of being pulled with it, he cast it off. This left him with only one direction to travel, down, and he knew with certainty that before he reached the frothing rapids below he would be travelling at terminal velocity.
As he threw himself into the dive he reflected that he had at least completed the objective which was all that mattered.
A bleeping from his tricorder informed him that he was just five kilometres from the retrieval site but he was in the wrong position to do anything about it.
As the water rushed toward him, he felt himself blacking out, though it was accompanied by some kind of tingling energy that he somehow knew was familiar.
