Free Star Trek by Kevin Killiany Page B

protection.
    The beings themselves were humanoid, with skin as gray as Cardassians’, but not scaled. They also seemed to share the Cardassian fondness for wearing black, but their hair color ranged from blonder than hers through orange and red to a maroon that was almost brown. When the closest guard glanced her way, she saw his eyes were a metallic yellow that looked almost artificial.
    Zaire? Zoysia? Something. Corsi knew she’d seen a data file on these people, but they were advanced way beyond hand axes and crossbows. And they should not be here. Something was not right. She rocked back on her heels, unfocusing her eyes, and waited for the memory to fully develop. Nothing.
    Giving up, she signaled Copper she had seen enough. The elder K’k’tict led them away from the strangers.
    â€œI know of this species,” Corsi said as they regrouped in a small clearing, “though I have never seen them.”
    She received understandably blank looks from the other three. However, she was not about to explain data files and life on other worlds to them.
    â€œThese are not my people,” she repeated, holding up one hand back toward them. “Coloration.”
    The K’k’tict bobbed, acknowledging the point.
    â€œCould we get closer to their camp?” Corsi asked. “Perhaps we can learn more about them.”
    With a typically K’k’tict lack of comment, Copper turned and began moving silently through the underbrush in a new direction. Corsi followed, bent low to stay under the stiff branches of the trees, with Lefty and Spot behind her.
    The clear-cut area was not as flat as it had appeared from the banyan tree. There were piles of logs apparently curing in the sun, the acidic tang of their resin threatening to trigger a sneeze with every breath. Conical mounds of smaller branches waited to be dry enough to burn. About two hundred meters from the buildings, however, near the edge of the shallow basin lined with metal, the cover ran out. Corsi wished for a set of binoculars, but made do with squinting.
    By the long runway was what appeared to be the frame of a glider being carefully dismantled. Though it was large—she estimated it could have carried perhaps two dozen of the newcomers—it was not huge. Which meant the runway’s expanse was indeed to give the landers a wide margin of error.
    Gliders arriving without power and cannibalized for parts and metal meant the— what is their name? —were making a one-way trip to get here. It also explained the hand tools and crossbows. Keeping mass to a minimum meant no heavy machinery and weapons that used locally available ammunition.
    But while the details made sense, the overall picture was wrong. What were these people doing here?
    As if in answer, a column of blinding light descended from the sky.

Chapter
12
    â€œI t looks like weapons damage,” Corsi said, eyeing the warped access panel beneath her gloves.
    â€œI would love to disagree with you,” Pattie’s musical notes sounded in the helmet of her EVA suit. “The thought of someone shooting a cloaked anthropological satellite is disturbing. Especially one orbiting a preindustrial world. But armor damage is consistent with a barrage by several very large lasers.”
    Corsi nodded to herself as she keyed the release sequence on the access panel. She could have done this from the Shuttlecraft Shirley hanging a few dozen meters away, its rear hatch gaping toward them, but where was the fun in that? She enjoyed the EVA work.
    Not as much as Pattie seemed to be enjoying Waldo Egg. The Nasat was delighted with what she called her demi-Work Bee.
    Resembling an upright egg with four manipulative arms, the Nasat-specific design had been the brainchild—and personal project—of Louisa Weldon, an engineer with the S.C.E. team on the Khwarizmi . Her special interest was adaptive technologies to enable nonhumanoids to interact effectively aboard