Madoh angrily shook her off. “I will not permit it!” One of his hands dropped to the hilt of a knife in his belt, and he retreated backward. Other Gorlans, most of them red-bands, instinctively moved to his side. “Find another way!”
“What would Ejah say if you asked her?” Saru stepped forward to block Madoh’s path. He was very aware that if the Gorlan drew his blade, there would be little he could do to stop him from plunging it into his chest. “Do you have the right to make this choice for her?”
Make him see, said a voice in his head. It sounded like Michael Burnham.
“You are afraid,” Saru went on. “I feel it radiating out of you like heat from a fire. I know that sensation. I live with it every day. But I overcome. I adapt. I ask you to do the same.”
“I will not risk her life!” Madoh shouted the words in his face, and Saru saw the silver crescent of the curved knife flash as it emerged from its sheath.
It is not your place to decide. The soft, unspoken voice was suddenly there in Saru’s thoughts.
Every one of the Gorlans froze, and Madoh’s blade slipped from his fingers, clattering to the deck by Saru’s hoofed boots. “Ejah,” he breathed.
Saru felt her before he saw her, even as he turned back to the open elevator at the rear of the compartment. It was as if a breeze of cool, soothing air had passed across him, pushing away the coiling, heavy smoke of all the doubts and the fears.
The hub stood in her shabby white robes on the threshold of the command tier, looking around with open interest. A pair of muscular red-bands were escorting her, but they seemed uneasy, as if they were caught between the compulsion to obey her and the desire to grab Ejah and rush her back to a place of security. Moving with difficulty on her withered leg, she advanced into the room and her gaze briefly found Saru’s. She smiled at him, then sought out Madoh. “Kindred, what are you doing?”
Her words broke the spell holding Madoh in place, and the Gorlan pushed past Saru, rushing to Ejah’s side. “You cannot be here! You must go below, where it is safer—”
“Is it safer there?” she said, cutting across his words. “There are new dead and new wounded in the cargo modules, lives lost and others forever changed by that first attack.” Ejah glanced at Saru. “I called them to crowd into the most forward pods, the ones closest to the sections of the ship where the hull is thickest, and abandon the other modules. Better that we cluster together in this than face adversity without community.”
“Who brought you?” Madoh turned his ire on the two escorts. “Who told you to bring her up here?”
“She told them,” said Saru, seeing the moment unfold as if he had been there. “I am right, aren’t I? She knew this was going to come to pass. The hub saw it coming.”
Ejah’s head bobbed. “Sometimes the path is clearest when there is darkness all around. I go where I am needed.”
“I beg you,” Madoh was imploring her, his eyes shining. “Please, Ejah. Return to the others. They need you!”
“I will not!” The hub spoke sharply, drawing herself up. Saru saw that one of her hands was freshly bandaged, possibly from a burn, but she showed no signs of distress. “I am not made of spun glass, Madoh, I will not break beneath the slightest pressure! The ones who need me most are in this room.” She limped across to where Saru and Nathal were standing and gave them both a nod. “Show me what to do. And be swift.” Her gaze briefly lost focus and turned inward. “They’re coming. In greater numbers. In all the possible paths, I see them coming.”
“How can she help the Gorlans to better fly and fight?” said Nathal, studying the slight female with open dismay. “I don’t understand.”
“I am the hub,” Ejah said simply.
“She will give her people focus and unity,” Saru explained.
“We could all use some of that,” muttered Weeton.
“And she has other talents.” Saru frowned. Now that he was about to say it aloud, he realized how it would sound. I believe she can see the future. “Ejah possesses a latent precognitive sense. A telepathic ability.”
Nathal’s incredulity showed on her face. “You want us to put our trust in a seer?” She made the last word an insult.
Ejah leaned close to the Peliar commander and spoke quietly. Saru barely caught the exchange between them. “You love your father, yes? Despite everything he has said and done.”
“Yes . . .”
“You will regret it if you do not tell him.” The hub’s words struck Nathal silent.
A strident chiming issued out from a vacant console, and Yashae stepped up to it. She visibly balked at what she read on the display there. “Lieutenant! I have a message coming in from Adjutant Craea on the warship. He says their sensors are picking up objects moving through the edge of the scattering field. Tholian ships, four of them this time.”
“Confirmed,” added Hekan, bringing up a holographic projection. “All four vessels are vectoring straight toward the Peliar warship. It’s the same pair that attacked them before, this time with reinforcements.”
“Makes sense,” said Weeton. “They’re going to concentrate their firepower on the warship, take it out of play first. Then it’ll be our turn.”
Saru felt a tug on his sleeve, and he looked down to see Ejah at his side. She pointed at Hekan’s holograph. “I need to see that.”
He blinked, unsure what she meant. “You are seeing it.”
“Not with these.” Ejah pointed at her eyes, then took Saru’s hand and pressed it to her forehead. “With this.” He felt a strange tingling in his palm and abruptly he realized he was touching the Gorlan sense organ that generated their aura-fields. “Do you understand? I can only help if I see the way this ship sees.”
She wants me to connect her to the star-freighter’s sensors. Saru’s thoughts unspooled in a sudden rush. It was possible, of course. He could reprogram his tricorder to interpret the scanner outputs and render them not as text or images, but as a mild electromagnetic field. “I can do that. There’s just one thing. It will be painful for you.”
Ejah nodded. “I know. I trust you, Saru.”
He took a deep breath and set to work. “Prepare yourself.”
• • •
The Tholians were not ones to allow a mistake to stand.
On their first engagement with the intruder craft, they had determined that the vessels of the Peliar Zel were, at best, a minor risk to their forces, and dispatched a flight of warcraft commensurate with the threat represented by the aliens.
The Tholians had engaged ships from the Peliar moons on several occasions in the past, and in every incident it had been the carbon-based forms that had perished in their entirety. The Tholians were very good at making sure the aggressor races surrounding their territory remained afraid of them, ensuring that no distress calls were ever sent by their targets, and no wreckage was ever found of the ships they destroyed. The remains of any intruder craft were spirited back to Tholia encased in energy webs, where they could be picked apart and analyzed. In this way, the Assembly grew stronger and more knowledgeable about its enemies, while the outsiders could only become more fearful of them and puzzle over the disappearances of their ships and crews.
The Tholian Assembly considered the Peliars a low-level threat. A minor local power, lacking the skill or resources of larger aggressor states like the Federation. Thus, when two Peliar craft had not only driven off a flight of spinner ships but actually crippled one of them, there was an immediate reevaluation of the tactical scenario. An error of judgment had been made. It would immediately be rectified.
Four spinners powered in at maximum sublight velocity toward the craft identified earlier as a military fighter-carrier. The Peliars were still in the process of recovery operations for their inert drones, and they were caught off guard by the second assault wave.
This time, rather than deploy the power-hungry energy-dampening weapon for a primary strike, the Tholians went for a split-pincer attack pattern, their tight approach comin
g open in a spiraling starburst that spread them across the defense zone. Guns on the carrier opened up with desultory bursts, but the swift crystal arrowheads spun out of the firing line. In return, they sent back lashes of crimson particles, beams cutting through the blackness, revealing the deflector shield perimeters as the strikes hit home and battered the protective energy envelopes.
The carrier was a dedicated combat vessel, and it was built to withstand a sustained attack, but the Tholians fathomed its weaknesses and struck at them. Shield emitters, pushed to their limits by one direct hit after another, buckled and finally failed.
Shots from the dancing spinner ships slammed into the unprotected hull and the Peliar vessel trembled up and down the length of its curved fuselage. Atmospheric gas and sparking discharges from severed power trains bled into the vacuum. Robbed of its defenses, unable to launch its fighter drones, the carrier was a slow, heavy target waiting to be carved apart by the Tholian attackers.
• • •
“They’re going to destroy it,” said Kijoh, aghast at the ruthless efficiency with which the Tholians were assaulting the Peliar carrier. “Like carrion birds tearing at a wounded herd beast.”
Saru looked to Nathal, and he saw doubt in the brusque Peliar woman’s expression. “Commander?” he prompted.
She took a step closer, her voice dropping. “The initial attack . . . that was my first taste of real, open battle. I confess it has left me challenged.” Nathal frowned, angry at her own words, but she quickly smothered the reaction. “Lieutenant Saru, I would welcome your input.”
Flee. The impulse came from somewhere deep, dark, and primal in him. The Kelpien resisted the urge to say the word and stiffened. “We must disrupt the Tholian attack on the carrier.”
“Agreed, but the range of our weapons is limited,” she noted. “We would need to close to almost point-blank range.”
Saru dwelled on Kijoh’s description of the attack—the carrion birds and the herd beast—and he recalled something from his homeworld, a sight he had seen with his own eyes as a youth. The ba’ul would drive away packs of scavengers from their kills with shows of aggression. Perhaps the same could be done with the Tholians.
“Indeed,” he said. “But we should use the other weapon at our disposal. This ship.”
“You want to charge them?” Kijoh understood immediately. “That’s a bold move.”
“It’s one we can accomplish,” said Nathal, regaining some of her earlier steel. She shot Ejah a look. “Can you make them work together, Gorlan? I need to know.”
“I can,” said the hub. Her hands were trembling as she gripped Saru’s tricorder. “We can.”
“We can,” repeated Madoh. “We will.”
“All sublight drives to full power!” Nathal gave the order and the star-freighter lurched forward. “Saru, I am ceding helm control to you. Don’t make me regret trusting you.”
“Commander.” He accepted the order and splayed his hands out over the podium. Saru’s throat turned arid, and all of a sudden the collar of his uniform felt tight and restricting, but he buried those distractions.
“Power curve is stable,” said Kijoh.
Madoh nodded. “Thrust matrix, stable.”
“Together,” whispered Ejah, and somehow her soft voice carried across the compartment. “We move together.”
The hub’s soothing aura washed over Saru and the tension in him ebbed. He had to resist the urge to look down at her, to wonder how it was she was able to do this. Before, the subtle electroemotional fields shared by the Gorlans were a dissonant clash of conflicting fears and doubts. Now they were meshing like the cogs of an invisible machine, the calm and the focus extending out to touch each one in turn.
Ejah breathed in and out in long, slow gasps, and as Saru watched, every Gorlan on the command deck fell into the exact same rhythm. It was working.
“Lieutenant Saru, take us in,” said Nathal. “We will follow your lead.”
He nodded and stared into the depths of the main viewer. “Turret guns, fire at will. Our aim is to interrupt their attack pattern, not to destroy them.”
“Sir, do you want to try that tractor beam trick again?” asked Weeton.
“They won’t fall for it a second time, Ensign,” Saru replied. “Put all available power to forward shields and the inertial dampers. Make sure the refugees in the cargo modules are protected!”
“Working on it,” came the reply.
The big transport ship was moving swiftly now, gathering momentum. On the screen, the mass of the Peliar carrier and its attackers loomed large. The first of the Tholian spinners reacted to the oncoming juggernaut and broke off from its attack pattern, drawing back toward its fellows.
“They see us,” said Yashae. “Reading increased transmissions between all Tholian vessels.”
“They’re wondering what we are doing,” said Madoh. “Perhaps they think we are going to run.”
“They will fire . . .” Ejah tugged on Saru’s sleeve, and he heard the pain in her voice. “I see it.” Her eyes screwed tightly shut, she reached out another hand and pointed at an area on Saru’s vector screen. “There.”
“Tholians are locking weapons on us!” shouted Weeton.
“Brace yourselves!” Saru thumbed a lateral thruster control and the freighter listed sharply to port—just as a lance of searing crimson fire issued from the prow of a Tholian ship and cut through the space where Ejah had indicated.
“Here,” she said, touching a different place. Saru felt her aura surround him. She was trying to bring him into the unity, guide him just as the hub was guiding all her kindred.
Saru silenced a jolt of panic and allowed it to happen. They moved in coordination, weaving the giant ship back and forth through the oncoming torrent of beam fire. Glancing shots flared off the deflectors but still the bulky freighter’s reaction was too swift for the Tholians to concentrate their firepower for more than a few seconds at a time.
The spinners were drawing back, and Saru wondered if they had decided to deploy the energy dampeners after all. The weapon would upset all their plans if it was triggered. We must ensure it is not, he told himself, and he dragged the big ship’s vector around to aim it right at the heart of the Tholian squadron’s formation.
“Give me maximum thrust,” said Saru. “And hold fast!”
The star-freighter bulled its way through the debris field left by the earlier engagement and into a headlong course toward the spinner ships. At the last second, the Tholian craft broke away in four different directions, forced to disengage and fall back from their attack on the wounded carrier or risk a collision.
Saru glimpsed one of the dagger-shaped ships barely avoid clashing its shields with the freighter’s, and he saw the red blur of its engine grids as it came about, pivoting to track them.
“It worked!” called Weeton. “They’ve stopped shooting at the Peliars!” He gave a wild grin and words spilled out of him. “I could have made a crack about playing chicken there and I didn’t—”
“Look sharp, talk less!” Saru retorted, channeling Captain Georgiou once more. “Perhaps if we live through this, you can explain to me the connection between Terran poultry animals and keeping one’s nerve . . . but not now!”
“They’re coming after us,” whispered Ejah, but Saru didn’t need her to tell him. He could see the Tholian craft following their leader, extending into a skirmish line to pursue the transport ship. “You’ve angered them.”
“Good,” said Nathal. “They’re reacting instead of thinking; we need to exploit that.” She looked to Saru. “The aft cargo modules are all vacated now, yes?”
“Yes,” Ejah answered for him. The strain in her reply was clear.
Nathal turned to her second-in-command. “Hekan, give the Tholians something else to think about, keep them off balance. Release the empty modules into our impulse wake.”
“Complying,” said the engineer.
Saru felt the tremor run along the deck and
up through his hooves. On a secondary viewer, he saw a dozen huge metallic cubes suddenly detach from the freighter’s flanks and tumble away. The lead Tholian ship was too close, and as it whirled into a punishing thruster turn, one of the large container pods slammed into it, becoming a cloud of steel splinters. The spinner ship fell into an uncontrolled tumble, and Saru saw it drop off the bottom of the viewscreen, captured by the powerful gravity well of the nearby planet.
In response to this act, the remaining three Tholians opened fire as one, spraying the rear of the star-freighter with high-energy blasts.
“Weeton!” Saru called out to the junior officer. “Can you vent the warp plasma from our drive nacelles?”
The question took the ensign off guard. “I guess I could . . . but we, well, we need that for warp drive.”
Saru’s eyes narrowed. “I am aware of how the technology works.”
“What are you thinking, Kelpien?” demanded Madoh. “Your man is right. Release that plasma and we lose the ability to go to warp.”
“It would take hours to replenish,” agreed Hekan.
“Does anyone here truly believe the Tholians will allow us to run?” Saru asked the question of all of them, and it seemed strange to hear the words coming from his own lips. “A trapped animal’s reaction is always fight or flight. I believe only the former option is open to us.”
“You want them to catch us?” Madoh pressed, his irritation flaring.
“Kindred,” said Ejah, silencing him with a word. “We trust Saru. Let him proceed.”
Nathal gave a reluctant nod. “Agreed.”
“Venting warp plasma . . . now.” Weeton tapped out a command string on his panel, and the secondary viewer fogged as a mass of shimmering white-gray vapor ejected from the ring of engine nacelles around the hull of the star-freighter. At the same moment, Saru deliberately put the ship into an off-kilter spin, simulating a loss of control at the helm.
“The Tholians have ceased fire,” reported Yashae. “They must think we took a hit to our guidance systems.”
“Let’s not give them time to consider the question,” said Saru. His voice was on the verge of cracking, but he kept on. “All turret guns, aim aft.” Saru’s hands were trembling, and he placed them flat on the panel in front of him to try and halt the reaction.
Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself Page 24
