Rise Like Lions

by David Mack

  He suppressed a twinge of melancholy and turned away from the window. For a moment, he thought about using the ship’s replicator to procure a cup of hot tea, then his door’s visitor signal warbled. He moved back to his desk, sat down, and picked up a data slate that he pretended to read. “Come.”

  K’Ehleyr entered with a bold stride. “Captain? You called?”

  Feigning distraction, as if he were reading something important, he took his time looking up at his first officer. “What’s the latest estimate for the completion of Andoria’s defenses?”

  “The same as the last estimate.” She looked suspiciously amused. “Something bothering you, Captain? Or do you always try to read a data slate while it’s turned off?”

  He frowned and dropped the slate on his desk. Then he exhaled angrily, stood, and smoothed the front of his jacket. “I don’t know what to call it,” he said. “Wanderlust, perhaps.”

  “That’s your old self talking.” She sat on the edge of his desk. “You spent a lot of years on your own, as a roamer. Old habits are the hardest to break.”

  Picard turned toward the window and stepped away from K’Ehleyr, and he wondered if it was because there was truth in what she said. “I keep thinking we’ve spent too much time here. We should move on.”

  “Not yet. There’s still a lot to do. It takes time to build a nation.”

  Hearing her put the thought into words crystallized it for Picard, and he turned to face her. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what we’re doing now. Not just fighting a war, not just struggling to get out from under a government—but working to erect a new one.” The scope of it all compelled a smile from him. “All the years that I fantasized what it would be like to see the Alliance overthrown, I never once stopped to imagine what would come after it.” Conducting a stark and honest inventory of his feelings, he confessed, “Probably because I never believed a rebellion would ever get this far.”

  “Well,” K’Ehleyr said, picking up the data slate from his desk, “then you’re going to love this.” She activated the device, accessed a screen of data, and handed it to Picard. “The latest tactical report from Memory Omega.”

  He skimmed the classified briefing, eyes wide with shock. It said that Cardassian forces aboard Raknal Station had betrayed their Klingon counterparts and seized control of the base. Lowering the pad, he asked her, “Can this be right?”

  “Confirmed on long-range sensors. Both sides are deploying everything they’ve got for a battle royal inside the Betreka Nebula. Looks like the Alliance is officially history, and the Cardassians and Klingons are going to war.”

  Picard was stunned. “What do we do now?”

  K’Ehleyr laughed. “Get out of their way.”

  32

  Keen and Bloody Swords

  If there was one truism that had served General Kaybok well throughout his decades of service in the Klingon Defense Force, it was that paranoia always paid the best dividends. One could never count upon the support of anyone else in times of trouble. Allegiances shifted, loyalties could be bought or sabotaged, and some people were simply no damned good to begin with. The idea found its truest expression, however, when dealing with non-Klingons—particularly those who deigned to call themselves the Empire’s allies. It had long ago been distilled into a saying that every Klingon learned in childhood: You can trust an enemy to act against you—but only a friend can betray you. Taking that lesson to heart had saved Kaybok’s life many times over.

  The bridge crew of Kaybok’s flagship, the I.K.S. bortaS, worked with the quiet, lethal focus of deep-forest hunters. The Vor’cha-class battle cruiser was under cloak, moving at one-tenth impulse inside the eye of the Betreka Nebula, just beyond the natural concealment of its turbulent, iridescent gases. Several million qelIqams away, but looming large on the bortaS’s main viewer, was Kaybok’s designated target, Raknal Station.

  The facility had all the classic hallmarks of Cardassian design. Its disc-shaped central hull was surrounded by curving pylons, giving it an arachnoid silhouette as it orbited the daylight side of Raknal V, the planet for which it had been named years before Kaybok had been born. It was seven kilometers in diameter and possessed more firepower than an entire fleet of warships.

  Nonetheless, Kaybok was resolved to see it captured or destroyed.

  “Gunner,” he said, his voice like a rumble of falling rocks. “Report.”

  Tevog, a young soldier whose face was still devoid of whiskers or scars, looked up from his console. “As you predicted, General. The Cardassians are still scanning for our old cloaking wavelengths.”

  That was welcome news to Kaybok. “Finally, it seems those petaQpu’ in the Great Hall did something right for a change.” It had been more than five decades since the Empire and the Cardassian Union had united to construct and jointly operate Raknal Station. Each side had claimed that it was installing its best and most advanced armaments and defenses on the station. Fortunately for Kaybok’s battle group, the Klingon Empire’s leaders had lied about that. It was in anticipation of a scenario exactly such as this that the Empire had for decades made certain that Raknal’s information about Klingon cloaking technology was at least one generation out of date—and also why the Defense Force conducted regular war games to practice attacking and boarding the station.

  “Commander Logar,” he said, beckoning his executive officer, “order Razheel Squadron to set their cloaks to the old wavelengths,” Kaybok said. “Then have them maneuver to attack Raknal head-on, along its orbital plane.”

  Logar snapped his head in a curt nod. “Yes, General.”

  Kaybok trusted the commander of Razheel Squadron to obey his orders in spite of the fact that they would prove fatal for him and his men. The general did not regret sending them to their deaths. They all would perish in glorious battle, braving the enemy’s most fierce assault, while ensuring the Empire’s eventual victory. No Klingon could ask for a more noble demise.

  Only seconds after the order was given, Logar returned to Kaybok’s side. “Razheel Squadron is in position, General.”

  “Good.” He jabbed commands into the touch screen interface beside his elevated command chair. “As soon as the Cardassian fleet engages Razheel Squadron, initiate alternating wave attacks from their flanks, and from above and below them on the z-axis.” Keying in his final directives—a prioritized list of targets on Raknal Station itself—he said to Logar, “Commence attack.”

  The lights flared bright white as the bortaS went to battle stations, and all around Kaybok the battle unfolded with swift precision. He watched without emotion as Razheel Squadron uncloaked and made a daring frontal assault on Raknal Station. As he’d hoped and expected, the Cardassian fleet defending the base converged like insects on a dropped morsel, all of them so eager to share a taste of what seemed like an easy victory that they broke formation and left their aft quarters vulnerable. Caught in the crossfire, the ships of Razheel Squadron vanished in a storm of fire. Kaybok smiled. It is a good day to die.

  He nodded at Logar, and the second phase of the assault began.

  The bortaS led the attack, swooping in under cloak, uncloaking, firing disruptors and torpedoes, then cloaking and veering off on seemingly random trajectories, in a practiced pattern that quickly reduced the Cardassian fleet to utter chaos. Over and over, Klingon warships appeared like spectres, dealt punishing blows, and then vanished.

  Several times each minute, a lucky salvo from the Cardassian fleet or from the station tore through a cloaked Klingon ship, reducing it to flames and debris, and a few glancing shots rocked the bortaS and even breached the hull in its engineering section. It amused Kaybok that Raknal’s formidable defenses actually worked against its own defending fleet, many of whose vessels blundered into its terrifying barrages. Despite starting the battle with superior numbers, in minutes the Cardassian fleet found itself whittled down to a handful of badly damaged stragglers huddled within the defensive radius of the station.

  Th
e station, Kaybok brooded. Now we separate the fortunate from the dead. There would be no easy or painless way to overcome the station’s defenses. The mere act of closing to within firing range would put the bortaS and every ship in its fleet squarely within the station’s impressively thorough firing solution. Being cloaked would confer no advantage at that range. Any ship close enough to attack the station would have to endure a firestorm unlike any other in the galaxy. Taking down this base would be nothing less than a suicide mission.

  “Logar,” Kaybok rasped, his voice harsh and loud in the muted environment of the bortaS’s bridge, “order the fleet to remain cloaked until after we drop Raknal’s shields. When I give the order, all ships are to fire torpedoes only, from outside the station’s disruptor range.”

  “Yes, General.” Logar relayed the order to the communications officer, who informed the fleet. This had been the plan since the mission was launched: Eliminate the defending fleet, then withdraw to a range of ten light-seconds, outside disruptor range, and hammer Raknal Station with a nonstop barrage of torpedoes. The one piece of the puzzle that was not general knowledge within the fleet was the special weapon the bortaS was about to deploy, one whose development Kaybok’s patrons in the House of J’Gol had personally financed and shepherded into service. “Gunner, arm a full salvo of phase torpedoes, and target the station’s defense screen generators.”

  Tevog initialized the experimental weapons, then looked back at Kaybok. “Torpedoes armed and locked, General.”

  “Fire.”

  The bortaS dropped its cloak just long enough to unleash a dozen prototype munitions, which followed drunken, corkscrewing paths toward Raknal Station—and then promptly blinked out of phase. Kaybok wondered what the Cardassians aboard the station had made of that unprecedented sensor data: twelve torpedoes simply vanishing. Next would come the proof of concept, and if his gamble proved to be a losing wager, this assault would be all but over.

  Massive detonations lit up the base, one after another, obliterating its shield generators. Just as Kaybok had hoped and his engineers had intended, the torpedoes had shifted seven terzIqars out of phase within seconds of being launched from the bortaS, took advantage of their phase-shifted status to penetrate the base’s shields, and returned to normal phase a fraction of a second before making impact—with spectacular results.

  The executive officer declared, “The station’s shields are down.”

  “All ships, begin torpedo barrage.”

  Kaybok smirked. The station’s size and weaponry no longer mattered. At this range, its disruptors were ineffectual. It could fill Raknal V’s orbit with torpedoes, but none of the Klingon ships uncloaked long enough for the torpedoes to lock on and connect. And with its shields down, the massive base, which was tethered by gravity into a geosynchronous orbit, was the galaxy’s biggest target.

  Exactly as my war game scenario predicted, Kaybok gloated. We’ll knock out its weapons platforms and then begin boarding operations.

  It all was going perfectly—and then it all went to Gre’thor.

  Without warning, torpedoes fired from Raknal Station began finding cloaked targets with unerring accuracy. One after another, Klingon warships were revealed in the moments of their destruction. Kaybok bolted from his chair and seized Logar by his lapel. “They have our new cloak wavelength! All ships, withdraw and regroup!” Moving on to the gunner, he added, “Ready another salvo of phase torpedoes.” He was about to go back to his chair when the communications officer beckoned him. Marching toward the man, he snapped, “What is it, Miklor?”

  “Intercepted signals, sir,” the frazzled, middle-aged Klingon replied. Nodding at his screen, he added, “From the Ya’Vang to Raknal Station!”

  “On speakers!”

  “It’s just noise, sir,” Miklor protested. “Raw data.”

  Hunching menacingly over the slightly built man, Kaybok demanded, “What kind of data?”

  Miklor worked in frantic motions, applying filters and translators to parse the signal he’d snared. Then the gibberish on his screen resolved into clear code, and he replied, “Our new cloaking wavelength, General.”

  For a moment, the news seemed unthinkable. Then Kaybok remembered the bitter lessons of youth: Only a friend can betray you. “Who sent that signal?”

  “Captain Krona,” Miklor said.

  Kaybok ascended the steps and reclaimed his command chair. “All ships! Locate and destroy the Ya’Vang! She and her crew are traitors to the Empire!”

  Tevog the gunner pounded the side of his fist on his console. “The Ya’Vang has broken formation, sir! She’s on the other side of the station and accelerating away. I can’t get a lock on her.”

  “Note her heading and send a burst transmission of all logs to the High Command on Qo’noS,” Kaybok said.

  After sending the signal as ordered, Logar approached the general’s dais. “Withdraw and regroup, sir?”

  “Too late for that,” Kaybok said. “We can’t go to warp inside the nebula, and at impulse, their torpedoes can rip us to shreds. We can’t fight, and we can’t retreat.” He entered coordinates into the terminal beside his chair and relayed them to the helm of the bortaS—and to those of every other ship in the fleet. “Those coordinates at maximum warp, on my mark.” The flagship’s bridge went silent. Kaybok’s intention was clear to all. He held up his head with pride, resolved to enter Sto-Vo-Kor with a warrior’s bearing. “Qapla’, sons of Qo’noS! Mark!”

  The helm officer engaged the warp drive. Kaybok’s last hope was that some great poet would one day pen a glorious song to tell the future how he and his men rammed Raknal Station at three thousand times the speed of light, destroying it and Raknal V for the everlasting glory of the Empire.

  Captain Krona saw the flash on the Ya’Vang’s viewscreen, and he knew that both Raknal Station and the majority of two nation’s fleets had just been annihilated. Good riddance, he decided. The aid of the Cardassians had been more a matter of tactics and convenience than one of fealty. They had been a means to an end, nothing more.

  Arrowing through the prismatic fury of the nebula, the Ya’Vang was on its own, a ship without a country for as long as it took to restore sanity to the regency. Krona had known the risk he and his crew would face by following a renegade path, but once it had become clear that the new regent lacked Klag’s clarity of vision and indomitable resolve, he had been unable to see any other way forward.

  “Helm,” he said, “time to target.”

  Ronak replied without looking at his console. “Six hours, eleven minutes.”

  “Qeyhnor, is the next trilithium warhead ready?”

  The weapons officer replied, “It will be armed before we arrive, sir.”

  Krona was pleased. He swiveled around toward the communications officer. “Beqar, send the following message back to Qo’noS.” He thought a moment. “Belay that. Send this directly to Regent Duras: ‘Because you lack the will to do what must be done to defend the Empire, my crew and I shall do it for you. Today, we strike a blow for pride, for strength and honor, for the Klingon way. On the blood of my father, I swear that I will make Bajor pay for its treason—and give the galaxy reason to tremble before us once more.’”

  Duras stood half-awake in his bedchamber and stared aghast at the vid screen on the wall. “What in the name of Fek’lhr is that yIntagh doing?”

  General Goluk answered over the comm from the Great Hall. “He seems to think he is defending the honor of the Empire, My Lord Regent.”

  As he entered his second minute of consciousness since being roused from a sound sleep, his memory came back in fits. “The Ya’Vang is the ship with those damn trilithium warheads, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, My Lord.” New information appeared on Duras’s screen as Goluk continued. “New intel indicates dozens of ships whose commanders are loyal to Krona are en route to rendezvous with him just outside the Bajor system.”

  The new regent’s face burned with rage. “Who do we have left th
at can intercept them?”

  “No one. We lost most of our combat-ready forces in this quadrant in the attack on Raknal Station, as did the Cardassians—not that they’ve shown any desire to stop Krona, even if they were able to do so.”

  A male Klingon servant opened Duras’s bedchamber door and entered with a fresh set of robes. Behind him, a female Klingon entered carrying a tray on which sat a pot of raktajino and a plate of raw targ meat, sliced paper thin and salted.

  Brusquely waving away the servants, Duras said to Goluk, “We need to issue some kind of warning to Bajor.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Krona is acting in open defiance of my public pledge. If we don’t disavow his actions and those of his accomplices, we’ll appear to be sanctioning their crime. At which point, my word as regent will become worthless.”

  “I see.” Goluk sounded as if he was trying to persuade himself of Duras’s argument. “It’s not the result of Krona’s mission we need to deal with, but its political blowback. Most wise, Lord Regent. I’ll issue the warning immediately. After all, it’s not as if it will affect the outcome.”

  His adviser’s nonchalant tone gave Duras new cause for alarm. “Why not?”

  “Because the I.K.S. vaQ’taj is holding station four hundred million qelIqams from Bajor and blocking all subspace signals in or out of the B’hava’el system.”

  Now Duras understood Goluk’s rationale. He thought that Duras wanted to issue a warning solely for the purpose of banking political capital. Realizing it would not be wise to press this matter further with his chief of staff, he feigned agreement. “Very good, General. See to it the message is sent immediately.”