Umber clouds roiled past Carter's windscreen as she and her wingmates plunged down through the noxious atmosphere of the old Cardassian penal planet Lazon II. Despite two days of diligent sensor scans, it had been impossible to precisely pinpoint the location of the distress signal transmitter because of contaminants in the upper stratosphere, but the general location was near where the main prison complex had once stood. During the Cardassian occupation, they had seeded the upper atmosphere with kelbanite dust -- perfect for preventing prisoners from being beamed away, but a real pain in the butt if you were just trying to find a long-lost friend.
Finally, the wing of five fighter craft broke through the cloud deck, but the scenery below was even less appealing. Dust devils careened in endless pirouettes across the arid desert floor of the broad valley wherein had been the prison, throwing up fine-grain sand, reducing visibility to less than a mile. Carter wondered if the weather was always like this or if they had just chosen to drop in on a particularly bad day.
Following Max's suggestion, Carter brought her squad in low and set down behind a line of hillocks to the east of the prison ruins so as to remain out of sight. No use advertising their presence to prying eyes. If anyone was still lurking about here she doubted they'd invite five strangers in for a tea party.
The five women disembarked. Carter tossed her helmet back into the pilot seat of her plane and shook out her hair, then ordered a full complement of field gear -- heavy phasers and combat tricorders, a TR-116 sniper rifle with X-ray scope for Max, and a science tricorder for Jo. None of them had more than basic first-aid training, but Carter took along a medikit just in case.
Alex was straggling behind, doing something down under the dashboard in her cockpit, so Carter called after her to speed things along. "Shake it, Dalton! I don't want to spend one extra second in this rathole!"
Alex finished what she was doing and buttoned up her canopy. "Just settin' out a special welcome mat for anyone who might try to take a joyride while we're gone, Commander."
"Oh. Good idea," replied Carter, wishing she'd thought of it
The combat tricorder strapped to her wrist was clear of enemy blips so she headed off towards the line of hills and the prison beyond, her four crew single file behind. Reaching the crest of the rise, they sprawled flat on their stomachs and peered across, getting the lay of the land. "What do you see, Sam?" asked Carter.
Sam lay perfectly still and concentrated while her cybernetic implants went to work. Eyes zoomed to telephoto and tuned to different wavelengths, ears a thousand times more sensitive than normal scanned for anything out of the ordinary, even smells were electronically sorted and analyzed. Finally, she announced her findings. "There are a lot of people inside the old prison walls" -- she pointed to where faint columns of smoke rose into the oppressive sky -- "but they're just milling about. None are moving in this direction, so I'd say they didn't spot us coming in."
"Jo?"
Jo checked her tricorder reading and verified Sam's assessment, adding, "I'm not picking up any indication we've been scanned, but the outer prison walls are laced with sensor-opaque materials so it's hard to be get a clear reading. The distress signal is definitely coming from inside the prison grounds though."
"All right, let's move out," ordered Carter, getting up from her crouch. She started down the slippery slope of the hill, loose gravel cascading down ahead of her in a miniature avalanche as her boots dislodged the crumbled topsoil. The avalanche grew in scale as four more pairs of boots made their slip-sliding way down behind Carter, but finally the bottom was reached, without major mishap.
The combat tricorders still showed all-clear, so Carter signaled for the party to continue advancing, motioning for Max, toting her cumbersome TR-116 rifle, to fall back a little and swing wide. There was another smaller ridge between the first taller ridge and the crumbling prison complex walls, and Carter called another halt behind its cover to assess the situation one last time before they went in. Sam's cybernetics still reported that no one had apparently noticed them, confirmed by Jo's tricorder.
The prison walls were only fifty yards ahead, looming tall and forbidding in the saturnine light. Made of molded stone, it was broken and crumbling in a few places-the result of a decade of neglect and violence-and through these opening could be seen the prison courtyard, a wide expanse of barren earth surrounding the actual prison buildings. The original prison buildings seemed to be completely destroyed, mere piles of rubble, but there were numerous clusters of ramshackle huts and shanties erected across the courtyard that looked inhabited.
No people were in sight though, and that worried Carter.
Still, they were here to find Jazz, or at least find whoever was transmitting a distress signal using the prefix code from the Sphinx, Jazz's old Banshee fighter, and to do that they had to go in and look around. Meet the people. Even though most of them were murderous criminals.
Carter emerged from their cover, followed by Sam, Jo and Alex. Max had leaner her rifle against a small boulder and was bent over tightening her boot straps, and so was being left behind. From high above the advancing women, a small object dropped -- maybe tossed by someone hiding on the top of the wall, masked by the sensor-opaque construction materials -- and landed amid their feet. It was a small chrome sphere the size of a plum with a single red blinking light. Four pairs of eyes widened in recognition and alarm.
"Grenade!" shouted Carter, but it was too late to take any action. Even as she and the others made to dive out of the way -- or in Jo's case, to dive on top of the explosive -- it detonated, sending a searing flash of light burning into their retinas, an ear-piercing shriek through their skulls, and a mule-kick into their guts. Even Max, who was still crouching behind the rise tying her shoes was thrown back by the blast against a small rock outcropping. The loose stones crumbled and fell, partially burying her in dirt and grapefruit-sized rocks.
When the flash cleared, five bodies were strewn across the dirt, a fine rain of dirt settling back down over them. From crevices in the prison wall, a dozen furtive, rag-clad men shambled out, closing in on their kill.
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