Before the body has time to drop, I swing the gun round to cover the other one. Her eyes are wide, her body tense. I have one moment to explain myself, before she launches herself at me.
"Set to stun," I say. "We have no more time for discussion. Get her to your fighter. Can you use the same route that brought you here?"
She stares hard at me, at the gun, at her commander's unconscious body on the floor. "The hangar deck is depressurized -"
"I can restore the force field. Temporarily. The gunfire, and the explosion, have further damaged the power mains. Get her to your fighter."
She stoops and gathers Caird up in her arms. "If you've hurt her," she hisses, "I'll have your guts for it, Admiral."
"I hope you will have the opportunity." I holster the gun. There is an emergency workstation by the doorway; I activate it, start to tap in the commands I need.
Gunfire ruptured an electroplasma main, and Caird's neutronic grenade finished the job. I can restore the force field by cross-circuiting a structural integrity generator - but it robs the station's overall SI field of power it needs, especially as I create a pressure imbalance by bleeding air from a reservoir to replenish the hangar bay - there are too many factors to juggle, and not enough resources.
There is a sound like a vast door slamming, and the deck beneath me quivers. "Hangar deck is repressurized. I do not know how long it will hold. Go."
She has Caird in a fireman's carry. She looks hard at me. "What about you?"
"I will follow. As soon as I can." I will use the gig's navigation console to retrace the path Thyvesh took, back to the Messalina. I hope. The Starfleet woman bites her lip, then heads for the door, shooting me one last dubious glance over her shoulder, before she goes.
And I turn, and run.
---
I run towards the console, and the station trembles around me. I have a vague feeling, in the back of my mind, that I have done this before... though I know I have not. Except perhaps in a dream, a dream of a memory that no longer exists -
I have no time for this.
The station is trembling, a deep humming tone seeming to sing through the structure, as I dash through the doorway and into the control room. The console is there. I am in time. Just.
Now, to consider what I must do -
I could set the console to send a... a jamming signal, I suppose, would be the best analogy. Only this will only last as long as the console does, and the console will only last as long as the station, and the station... is not healthy. I think, furiously. The console, and one side of the door, are outside normal space-time... but if the console's own subjective timeline ends, surely its effect on the door must end too?
I do not know. I would have to be well versed in temporal mechanics, to know for sure. What I am sure of - is that I can take no risks. Whatever I do now, I must end this.
My mouth goes dry as I start to punch in commands.
Extend the radius of the console's operation, so that it covers the whole of the station - I can do that. Then, there is a built-in... tropism. An affinity between the console and the door. I can use that, too. My fingers are trembling. This should work -
I enter the last command, and set the time delay. Five minutes. In the current time frame of the station. The procedure will execute in five minutes. I have that long to get clear.
I run.
My boots clatter on the trembling deck. Five minutes. I only hope the station will last another five minutes. I dare not trust the turbolifts. I find a ladder, scramble down it, hand over hand.
A sudden jolt leaves me sprawling on the deck at the foot of the ladder. Four minutes. I am one level above the hangar deck. I run for the next accessway, and the lighting flickers. Too much damage to the power mains. I suppose it is fortunate that I only reactivated one of the fusion reactors - if the station had been at full power, it would have blown up by now.
I do not bother with the next ladder, I simply drop through the accessway and onto the lower deck. Time is running out. But the door to the hangar is in sight, now, and I run to it.
And it does not open.
I check the status panel next to it. The force field is failing again, the air pressure has dropped - the doors are sealed as a safety precaution. Three minutes. I open up the panel, short out the sensors, crank the hydraulics manually. Air whistles, then screams, around the slowly opening door. Two minutes. If that.
I plunge through the door, with a cold wind gusting at my back, and my ears pop. The air pressure is low, so very low - it is like being on the peak of a high mountain. I feel a dreadful void opening in my chest, hear a buzzing in my ears, while other sounds go dim and dull and dead.
The Scorpion fighter is gone - Caird and her companion should be on their way to safety. The gig is still there. I fumble with my wrist communicator, send a command override to the gig's computer. The access hatch opens, beckoning me, welcoming. I have lost track of time. I move through a strange, empty, cold world, a hollow ache in my chest, a dreadful fuzziness in my vision.
I reach the open hatch, clamber inside, hit the control. The hatch hisses shut. Air and heat surround me as the gig's interior repressurizes. I blink away the encroaching dizziness, stumble to the pilot's seat.
"Combat -" The word catches in my throat, and I choke and cough. "Combat emergency. Immediate lift-off." The main console is a maze of dancing lights before my eyes. One minute. Less.
The gig lifts. I grab the flight stick, aim the nose of the little ship outwards, away from the station. Seconds, only. I push the thrusters to maximum, blink away the tears from my frigid eyes, inhale deeply. Thyvesh's course coordinates. They are still on the autopilot. I engage the reverse sequence, and slump back in the chair. There is nothing more I can do.
Ahead of me, there is only blackness. After a short time, I reach out, activate a viewscreen, call up reverse angle. Behind me, there is also blackness. The station is gone, as if it had never been.
I smile to myself at that. After all, it had never been.
The gig is travelling along the path Thyvesh set, a path that leads through dimensions I was never meant to see. All around me is an infinite and uncaring nothingness. An ultimate trackless waste. We would need.... What would we need, to explore this? Someone who could see as Thyvesh sees, someone who could find the rare oases of reality in this endless desert of unformed space-time.
I try to think how long it took, when we came here... but does time mean anything in this bizarre realm? The autopilot bleeps quietly to itself from time to time. No alarm sounds, but I do not know if that is meaningful - I could be going home, or I could be drifting forever in a space outside the universe. I find I am almost too tired to care.
Then, suddenly, there is light.
The forward viewports fill with stars and grey-green light - there is a world out there, a planet, poor in vegetation, perhaps, but not the blasted ruin of Priyanapari that I left behind me. And there is other light - blue and shifting, and beyond it, a dire green glow pulsing at the heart of a nest of thorns.
Messalina, and she has locked on a tractor beam. I reach for the comms console.
"This is T'Laihhae calling Messalina," I say. "I have returned... I hope."
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