Lee Carter opened her eyes. Funny... the afterlife looks just like the transporter pad of the Cat's Eye, she thought fuzzily. I even see Matthew Cross at the transporter controls. She shook her head, trying to dispel the illusions from her mind. The panorama before her solidified and took definite form, and she realized with a start that it was the transporter pad of the Cat's Eye! The transport beam released her and she staggered momentarily, but quickly recovered her balance. Her mouth unfroze.
"What the--!"
"Welcome aboard, Commander!" intoned an obviously relieved Cross.
Must be serious for Cross to show emotion like that, thought Carter. Aloud though, she said, "Thank you, Lieutenant. Surprised to be here!"
"I'll say!" This last came from a familiar voice behind Carter. She turned, and realized that her entire wing was standing on the transporter platform behind her. It was Max that was speaking. "Last I checked, we were all blown to smithereens by a nova bomb. Why are we still alive?" she demanded of Cross.
Typical Max, thought Carter. Being alive against all odds wasn't enough for her, she wanted to know why! Actually, she realized, I want to know that too! She turned back to Cross, awaiting his reply.
"The Cat's Eye followed you as deep into the atmosphere as we could," he said nonchalantly, his imperturbable facade firmly back in place. "Dex detected the tractor beam envelope you created around the nova bomb and calculated that it would be enough to contain the explosion. When the bomb exploded, we beamed you out of your cockpits just in the nick of time. It was pretty hairy there for a few nanoseconds trying to unscramble your patterns from all the gamma-rays, but I managed to bring you all in," he finished, clearly proud of his handiwork.
"What about our starfighters?" Carter asked the Cat's Eye's pilot. "Are they…?" She couldn't finish the question, knowing already for a certainty what the answer was.
Cross shook his head, confirming Carter's fears. "I'm sorry, Lee. There was nothing we could do. When the nova bomb exploded they were all vaporized instantly."
Any further conversation that might have been forthcoming was forestalled however, by Dexter Gray's voice calling from the cockpit. "Lieutenant! We're drifting deeper into the atmosphere!"
Cross noted Carter's quizzical look and replied to her unspoken question. "We're not entirely out of the woods yet, Commander. We had to get pretty close to beam you out, so the explosion from the nova bomb hit us pretty hard. It knocked out the engines. All we have left is thrusters, and that's not enough to keep us in orbit. We're transmitting a distress signal, but there's a lot of interference from the residual hard radiation."
Carter acknowledged Cross' grim assessment with a curt nod of her head, but from behind her, Max groused darkly, "Some rescue… Who's going to rescue you?"
Carter sighed. She looked at the rest of her team, and saw her own dismal feelings reflected there. Falling towards a fiery re-entry, and all five of their starfighters lost in one fell swoop! Someone was going to pay for that when they got back to the Starbase, and she was pretty sure she knew who…
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