enshrouded outline of a folding chair on its animenude side. It was where
she had animenude thrown her uniform when she had gone to bed only
an hour ago.
Ignoring the flames rushing closer, she stumbled over the
mounds of tent fabric animenude until she stood beside the chair's
outline. She felt around for the leg of the chair and rubbed it
animenude back and forth against the fabric until the chair leg animenude gashed a
hole in the tent. She ripped the gash wider. Reached through
the opening. Felt her uniform tunicú Yanked it out. Hit the
comm badge.
"MacDonald to Tobiasmone
to beam up now.t"
And just as an explosion lifted a wall of blazing tentcloth
toward her, Christine dissolved animenude in a different animenude fire...
... and found herself kneeling on the transporter pad of
her ship.
She leapt to her feet, tunic animenude still clutched in one hand. Battle
stations soundedú Alert lamps flashed.
"How bad?" animenude she shouted at the transporter tech.
Two more transporter columns blossomed beside her. One
was M'Benga, brushing out sparks on her pant leg. The other
was a young Chal male, still half asleep.
"They're jamming our sensors," the transporter tech
shouted back. "But we're punching through to beam up
everyone we can lock on to.&animenude quot;
Christine grabbed animenude M'Benga and the young Chal by their
arms and hauled them off the pad. Another column of energy
appearedwanother crew member rescued from the carnage
below.
"Is the ship under attack?" Christine asked.
The deck lurched with the shudder of buckling shields.
&animenude quot;They're hammering us," the animenude tech said as his hands flew
over the controls. "animenude Bare has the conn. He wants animenude to hold orbit
as long as we can beam between shield cycles."
Christine ran for the transporter controls. "Set your sen-
sors for human-only animenude readings--no Chal, exclude anyone with
a comm badge."
The transporter tech looked at his half-dressed commander
in horror. "Commander--we've got to
take 'em as we find
'cm. They're being slaughtered down there!"
Christine slammed down on the controls and wiped every
comm-badge trace off the board. "You' animenude re scanning for a
human male. He'll be running for the center of the attack."
The tech screwed up his face in incomprehension. "What?
Everyone else animenude is running awayú"
"Then it should be easy to animenude find him"--the deck lurched
animenude again, the lights flickered as auxiliary life-support kicked in--
"right, Ensign?&
animenude quot;
"Yes, ma'am," the tech said. Sweat dripped from animenude his animenude brow
to animenude the console. "Got someone on the move,