The sky was trying to kill them.

Amber and green clouds spun together in towering columns ringed by the jagged spirals of lightning. Wind tore across the grey, rocky plateau with howling strength, driving sheets of grit and debris that rattled the equipment and stung the skin. When they’d landed, the horizon of this rugged land had stretched on forever. Now, it was swallowed by the roiling wall of the vortex as it marched towards them.

Captain Evelyn Pentecost adjusted her footing, glad of the strong grip of sturdy Starfleet boots. One gloved hand braced against the beacon’s stabiliser as the whole rig shuddered against the gusts. ‘Hold it steady!’ she called.

Kedren Sorren, crouched on the other side of the tripod, gave the rig a cautious tap as if to test it for betrayal. It was ostensibly daytime, but with the roiling storm blocking out the sun, she could better make out his face by the green-lit display highlighting his sharp, Cardassian features. ‘Steady is relative!’ Even shouting, the screaming wind threatened to snatch his words as rain streamed off his hair. ‘The phase lock’s drifting! If we sample before the shear stabilises, the eigenvectors will be noise with delusions of grandeur!’

‘Then we take the equipment down a peg! We need the eye’s frequency matrix!’

The beacon’s sensor array flickered, diagnostic lights fighting to stay alive. This close to the storm front, the atmosphere itself was trying to kill the feed, which Pentecost thought a poor show for equipment designed to monitor storms. It was one last insult after a week of weather delays, faulty relays, and a lightning strike she was taking rather personally. If the array didn’t come online in the next few minutes, the entire survey – weeks of prep, an interstellar relay network, a once-in-decades planetary alignment – would return precisely nothing.

A burst of static flared from Pentecost’s combadge. ‘Tempest to away team – Captain, Sorren, you are out of time!’ Commander Jelvier’s voice cracked with interference and irritation. ‘Beam-out window closes in sixty seconds!’

Pentecost tapped her badge without looking up from the flickering display. ‘Acknowledged, Tempest. We’re nearly there.’

‘Nearly there was ten minutes ago!’ Jelvier snapped. ‘Every second you stay down there risks your lives and the data you’ve gathered!’

Sorren cut in without looking up. ‘If we leave now, Commander, all we’ve learnt is that storms are windy.’

‘Captain –’

‘Sorry, Commander.’ Pentecost shrugged. ‘Science. You know how it is.’ She wasn’t just being glib, her focus torn between her furious XO, the sky, the beacon’s display screen. The clouds above were folding in on themselves, a spiralling wall that threatened to be her tomb. ‘I know you don’t want to report me dead, but I don’t want to report that we’ve missed an opportunity that only comes around every thirty-seven years.’

Jelvier didn’t have an answer to that, and her attention shifted to Sorren as he stood.

‘I’ve framed the anomaly as well,’ Sorren said, as if he’d finished off a convenient equation rather than secured a secondary objective. ‘Nested resonance inside the main profile. Could be natural. Could be manufactured.’ The next lightning strike landed close enough to flare white across their vision, but Pentecost judged it several miles off at least.

‘Hear that, Commander? More mysteries unlocked!’ She frowned as the only answer was howling winds. ‘…Tempest? Come in.’ Her eyes met Sorren’s as static fizzed. ‘Oh.’

Sorren’s expression barely shifted. ‘The data’s safe,’ he said. ‘Automated transmission on delay. The instrument’s designed to survive worse than this.’

At last, Pentecost sucked her teeth. ‘Not sure we are, Ked.’

‘It’s not all bad news.’ He thumbed a new sequence into the control pad. The harmonic hum that rose from the rig was almost lost under the wind, but after listening to the uncooperative equipment for hours, days, weeks, she could pick its tunes out from the blizzard. ‘Phase lock’s stabilised.’

‘Good.’ She checked the readings, watching jagged patterns smooth into a clean lattice. ‘We’ve got the eye signature. Bag the anomaly.’

Sorren’s hands moved swiftly, unrushed despite the oncoming storm. ‘Framing and tagging. Done. Now, shall we try to not die for a weather report?’

Pentecost had already moved on from the beacon, her tricorder in hand. ‘The lightning density’s cut us off from the Tempest. Any ideas?’

‘To restore communication with the Tempest? No. Fortunately, we might just live to be irritated by Jelvier’s constant mistrust of your judgement another day.’ He’d been studying his PADD, now turning its rain-slick display of his sensor feeds towards her. Amid the storm’s chaos, a single faint pulse blinked in regular rhythm.

‘Caliban,’ Pentecost breathed with relief.

‘In the upper troposphere, fighting the shear. If we give her a cleaner target…’

‘She gives us a ride.’ Pentecost’s grin was quick and sharp despite the rain lashing against her face. ‘Can we use the beacon’s secondary emitter to punch through interference without compromising the data?’

Sorren was already keying in commands. ‘I’m retasking it for a tight-band ping, boosting with the array’s harmonic…’ He clicked his tongue. ‘It’ll burn out in thirty seconds.’

Thunder rolled like an avalanche from the oncoming storm. ‘Thirty seconds sounds great, Ked,’ she decided, and tapped her combadge as he finished keying commands. ‘Pentecost to Caliban.’ Only the roar of the storm answered. She tried again, louder. ‘Caliban, respond!’

At last, Sorren’s hands stopped moving, his gaze unseeing. ‘Ah,’ he said. In the not-so-distant distance, lightning flashed anew. ‘Well…’

‘Well?’ Pentecost rounded on him as the wind howled around them. ‘That’s it? And your last bloody words are going to be, “Well?”’

‘It’s not as if anyone’s here to record them for posterity.’

‘I’ll posterity your posterior-’

The world turned white. This bright, this blinding, Pentecost knew a lightning strike would be final.

Then the bulkheads and deck of the Waverider-class shuttle Caliban rushed to fill her vision as the transporter beam faded. Relief was short-lived as the shuttle lurched, sending both of them tumbling to the deck. Through the forward canopy, the storm roiled around and below them.

‘Transport complete,’ came the cool, curt confirmation from Lieutenant Lina Renard at the co-pilot’s station. ‘Leave now, Lieutenant.’

Young Lieutenant Hargreaves’s eyes lit up as she spun the shuttle away from a stabbing fork of lightning. ‘You got it!’ Caliban jolted as it punched through the lower atmosphere, and Hargreaves whooped.

‘If you must whoop, whoop when we are clear,’ Renard reprimanded.

Pentecost clawed her way up off the deck into a cockpit seat. ‘I’d give you permission to whoop, Hargreaves. But I don’t dare countermand Renard. Remind me to thank Commander Jelvier for sending a ride.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Hargreaves, voice absent as her eyes and fingers focused on navigating the Caliban up through the storm-racked skies of Kethara II, whose rare supercell’s unique energy harmonics might unlock the next generation of terraforming and planetary shields. ‘Jelvier was just moaning. The pickup was the lieutenant here’s idea.’

‘Commander Jelvier,’ said Renard reproachfully, ‘does not moan.’

‘He definitely does!’ Sorren countered cheerfully, snapping safety webbing across his chest.

‘Now, now, Ked.’ Through the canopy, the clouds began to fall away, revealing the black curve of space. Pentecost slouched back in her seat, rain still dripping from her jacket. ‘Renard just saved our arses. She can be as persnickety as she wants.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’ Renard sounded like she wanted to frame it as a question. Then, ‘…the commander is angry, ma’am.’

‘He’s always angry.’ Pentecost’s eyes were already half-lidded as the adrenaline from dodging a storm drained away. ‘Good news is: I’m still here to cheer him up.’