Star Trek Into Darkness Page 0,5
their furious pursuit of the sacrilegious strangers. Spying the cherished document dangling from the branch, they immediately came to a halt and dropped to their knees before it in profound supplication. With hands extended in front of them, they commenced a steady, reverent chanting: eyes closed, heads bobbing. The scripture of the gods had been recovered, and they were giving thanks.
A number of them, however, had more than passive veneration on their minds. For them, there remained the small matter of revenge. To the group of warrior/defenders who continued the pursuit, prayer could wait until those who had desecrated their most holy site had been suitably dealt with. If the gods so willed it, that reckoning would take place very soon now.
Struggling to keep up with Kirk, McCoy still put one foot in front of the other. He was simply not used to moving so fast. Having to do so now did nothing to improve his mood. He was not so fatigued that he failed to recognize the surroundings they had studied prior to the drop, however. He pointed to his left.
“Jim, this is all wrong! The pickup beach is that way!”
Kirk looked over at him, each word now interrupted by a short, hasty breath. “We won’t make it to the beach!”
McCoy knew for certain what was coming now, and he did not look forward to it.
There was not a lot of red forest left in front of them. Unfortunately, its absence didn’t translate into the presence of safe ground. It didn’t, in fact, translate into any ground at all.
Directly ahead of them the forest disappeared, giving way to a line of blue-green and cloud-pocked sky above. The nearer they drew to the edge of the forest, the more the view ahead was replaced by sky and, soon, by sea. The alien ocean lay too far below, the line at the bottom of the sheer cliff they were approaching marked by gravel and wave-washed boulders. Not that they could have survived such a fall had the rocks been replaced by the softest sand.
They could stop and try to confront the howling locals who were drawing closer every second—or . . .
There was no time for analysis. Without breaking stride, the two men hurled themselves over the edge. As he plunged over the cliff, arms flailing and legs kicking, McCoy barely had time to hear what Kirk yelled as side by side they accelerated toward the waves far below.
It was a sentiment he echoed at the top of his lungs as rocks and water rushed toward them.
Slightly more salty than any of Earth’s oceans, the water through which Kirk and McCoy now found themselves swimming was murky but unpolluted. Clouds of brightly hued local aquatic life-forms swam past and around them. For the most part, the two humans were ignored. On a couple of occasions, multi-finned predators flashing impressive cutlery approached for a closer look. Both times they circled the swimmers once or twice before twisting sinuously away, having decided that the peculiar shapes did not conform to anything recognizable as their natural prey. Or perhaps it was the suddenly wide eyes of a certain submerged doctor that caused them to depart.
Reaching up, McCoy tugged at the sleeve of his silvery, form-fitting suit. The advanced diveskins he and Kirk had worn beneath their native kaftans now kept him warm in the cool alien depths. Extracted from inner pockets, goggles equipped with attached recycling breathers allowed both men to breathe comfortably underwater. The emergency devices would last only thirty minutes at most. That would be more than enough for McCoy. He had no intention of remaining in the alien sea even that long.
Despite knowing the location of their destination, it took a while for the two swimmers to orient themselves in their unfamiliar surroundings. From time to time, they would exchange looks and hand signals before deciding to move onward.
Only when the outlines of a massive, familiar shape began to emerge from their watery surroundings did they begin to relax. Ahead lay something huge and foreign to the world of Nibiru: the submerged bulk of the Starship Enterprise. It loomed before them like some great shining inhabitant of the deep as schools of alien water dwellers flashed and darted around it.
The small personnel airlock through which they entered had been designed to deal with the airlessness of space, not an influx of seawater. It still served its function, however, and the minor mess caused by the damp entry of the two officers