Rise Like Lions

by David Mack

  Before Mac could wonder aloud what Krona had been implying, McHenry’s telepathic voice drowned out his thoughts with a frantic interruption. Mac! The Ya’Vang is a decoy! I saw it in Krona’s thoughts!

  Soleta spun and faced Mac—she, too, had heard McHenry’s warning. Focusing his thoughts, Mac asked, A decoy for what?

  He put some of his trilithium warheads on a bird-of-prey that took a wide course around the blockade. I’m sending its coordinates to Soleta’s panel.

  She turned and activated her console as Mac rushed to her side. One look at the data was enough to wipe all jubilation from her face. “I’ve got the bird-of-prey on sensors. It’s less than two million kilometers from the star”—she frowned and looked at Mac—“and it just armed a trilithium warhead.”

  Jellico was crestfallen. “It’s beyond disruptor range, and even if I fire a torpedo now, it won’t reach them till after the warhead’s away.”

  Tears shone in Lefler’s eyes. “Then that’s it. Game over, Klingons win.”

  “Not yet,” Mac said. “We have one thing faster than a torpedo: us.”

  Soleta grabbed Mac’s arm and hissed, “What’re you doing?”

  “What needs to be done.” Though he normally communicated telepathically with McHenry, he decided the crew needed to hear his next order. “McHenry? I know you can push this ship to speeds we can’t imagine. You can reach them before they fire.”

  McHenry responded aloud over the ship’s PA system, much to the crew’s surprise. “Mac, they’re about to launch. You won’t be able to fire before they do.”

  Calhoun nodded with grim, quiet resolve. “That’s why I want you to ram them, at maximum warp. We need to destroy that warhead.”

  “Are you sure about this, Mac?”

  “I am.”

  McHenry asked in a plaintive voice, “Soleta?”

  She looked into Mac’s eyes, and for perhaps the first time since he had known her, she looked at him with something greater than lust or affection or even mere respect. He knew that she had, at that very moment, come to love him.

  “Yes, Mark,” she said. “Do it. Before it’s too late.”

  “As you command. Prepare for maximum warp.”

  Soleta took Mac’s hand. Then she said, “To hell with decorum,” and pulled him into a passionate kiss, right in front of everyone.

  Locked in her embrace, savoring their emotional farewell to the flesh, Mac realized that his life’s first truly selfless act was also about to be its last. That’s all right, he concluded. Always best to end on a high note.

  The Excalibur leaped into warp, on a collision course with fate.

  One Minute Earlier…

  “Get me more power!” Picard shouted toward the overhead speaker. He had taken over at the helm after the pilot, a Tellarite named Pog, had been struck unconscious by a falling hunk of the bridge’s overhead. “I need full impulse, Mister Barclay!”

  The harried chief engineer hollered back, “Well, if you know some secret to unmelting a drive coil, now would be the time to share it, Captain!”

  “Dammit, Reg,” K’Ehleyr chimed in from the tactical console, “we can’t do combat maneuvers on thrusters alone! If the impulse drive is gone, say it now—because if you can’t fix it, we need to abandon ship!”

  Unintelligible cries of distress and a muffled explosion drowned out Barclay’s first attempt at a reply. As the commotion receded, he said again, “We can do it. Give us twenty minutes.”

  “You’ve got five!” Picard snapped, wiping blood from a small shrapnel wound in the middle of his left eyebrow. “Bridge out!”

  An explosion rocked the ship, and Picard clutched the sides of the helm panel to avoid being thrown from his chair. Aftershocks rumbled through the Enterprise as he looked back at K’Ehleyr. “What hit us?”

  “The Ardent, sir. She’s gone—and the only reason we didn’t go with her is that Defiant turned itself into our shield.” She switched the angle on the main viewscreen to show the Defiant holding station off the Enterprise’s port side, its own hull dented, scorched, and perforated.

  Picard waved a drift of noxious gray smoke out of his eyes. “Remarkable,” he said under his breath, impressed by such a display of valor from a people he himself had been all too willing to dismiss months earlier as a lost cause.

  The forward turbolift doors opened, and a quartet of radiation-suited damage-control personnel rushed out. They split up and made quick work of extinguishing the small plasma fires inside several of the aft bulkheads. Moments later, a medical team emerged from a different turbolift and rushed to the aid of the fallen bridge personnel, who lay strewn about Picard and K’Ehleyr.

  An alert shrilled at K’Ehleyr’s station. “Trilithium warhead signature,” she said. “It’s the Ya’Vang, bearing—hold on, Excalibur’s emerging from stealth mode and moving to intercept! She’s firing!” Half a second later, the half-Klingon woman pumped her fist. “Yes! They got her! Ya’Vang is down!”

  “Excellent,” Picard said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Tell Captain Calhoun I said, ‘Well done.’ Now let’s see if we can finish off the rest of these—” He paused as he watched K’Ehleyr’s good mood turn to horror. “What’s happened?”

  “A second trilithium signature,” she said. “Bird-of-prey at point-blank range to the star. They must’ve known we’d go after the Ya’Vang.”

  He stood up. “Who’s close enough to stop the bird-of-prey?”

  K’Ehleyr shook her head. “No one. They’re powering up their forward launcher. We have less than twenty seconds to get out of here.”

  “Alert the fleet. Order all ships that have warp speed to retreat.”

  She started to open the channel, then stopped and reacted to a new alert. “Massive energy reading from the Excalibur! She’s going to warp! She’s on a collision—” A blazing flash of light near the southern pole of B’hava’el washed out the Enterprise’s main viewer for several seconds. As it faded, K’Ehleyr finished her thought. “She was on a collision course with the bird-of-prey.”

  The news hit Picard like a fist. “Is… is the Excalibur…?”

  K’Ehleyr was somber. “Both ships are gone, sir. Completely destroyed.” Reacting to more incoming signals, she added, “The Ya’Vang just exploded.”

  Picard didn’t know what to say. Celebration felt grossly inappropriate, but his heart swelled with admiration for Calhoun and his crew. Never before had Picard witnessed an act of such amazing personal sacrifice. It left him speechless.

  His moment of reverent, bereaved silence was broken by the chirp that preceded the opening of an internal comm channel. From an overhead speaker he heard Troi’s voice. “Captain, the crew of the Excalibur is in Hangar Bay One.”

  Stunned and baffled, he looked at K’Ehleyr for an explanation, but all she had to offer was a confused shrug. Realizing that Troi was his only source of information at the moment, he asked, “How many of their crew made it aboard?”

  It was Calhoun who replied sadly, “All of us.… Except one.”

  “Remain where you are, Captain,” Picard said. “We’ll send a medical team to assist you as soon as possible. Bridge out.” He threw a hopeful look at K’Ehleyr. “Inform Mister Barclay I want impulse power in five minutes. It’s time to finish this battle while we have the upper hand.”

  As if he had spoken a curse or invoked a jinx, an unwelcome sight rippled into view on the forward screen: Several dozen Keldon-class Cardassian warships uncloaked within visual range of the war-torn rebel fleet and cruised toward it at full impulse, grouped in a standard battle formation.

  K’Ehleyr magnified the image and stared in confusion at the Cardassian ships. “I don’t recognize those markings. What fleet are they from?”

  Picard knew the ships’ markings all too well, from his years of discreet service to Gul Madred. “Those ships don’t belong to the regular Cardassian military,” he said, his voice low with dread. “They’re from the Obsidian Order.”

  �
�So much for having the upper hand,” K’Ehleyr said.

  Walking back to the helm, Picard said, “Tell Mister Barclay he now has one minute.” He sat down. “Because I don’t plan to die while standing still.”

  Alone in the brig of the Geronimo, Kes had only her imagination to tell her what was happening as concussions pounded the ship and the lights stuttered and failed. Alert klaxons wailed, and from the corridors outside her cell she heard shouts followed by explosions and the moans of the wounded and dying. The din of combat continued for several minutes, and each hit the tiny frigate suffered thundered more loudly than the last.

  Then came the bone-jarring thunderstroke that plunged the ship’s interior spaces into darkness. The force field on her cell went out, but the magnetic restraints binding her to the bulkhead remained stubbornly locked. Smoke billowed in from outside, and she dropped to the deck to avoid it and find breathable air.

  Tuvok’s voice echoed down the passageways as he shouted to the surviving crew members, “Abandon ship! Get to the escape pods!” Moments later, she heard his running steps and saw him stumble into her cell. “Kes! Are you all right!”

  “I’m—” She choked on a mouthful of smoke and coughed. “I’m here!”

  He crouched at her side, unlocked her restraints, and pulled her to her feet. “Stay with me! We need to abandon ship!” Using his tremendous Vulcan strength, he dragged her like a rag toy out of the brig and toward an outer corridor, where the escape pods were located.

  “Tuvok, stop! What’s happening?”

  He answered without slowing or missing a step. “Our ship is dead in space, Enterprise and Defiant are surrounded by Cardassian warships, and most of the fleet is gone, including the Excalibur.” They rounded a corner so quickly that Kes rebounded off the far wall as she struggled to keep up with her captor.

  A booming impact rocked the Geronimo and momentarily pinned Kes and Tuvok against a bulkhead. The ship continued to tremble, and Kes could tell that the next serious hit the Geronimo suffered would be its last. As Tuvok pulled her back into motion, she pleaded, “Stop, please! I can save us!”

  “It’s too late,” he said, opening the hatch on the corridor’s only remaining escape pod. “This battle is lost. I need to get you to safety.”

  Marshaling her strength, she pulled free of his grasp. “Why save me at all?”

  “I swore to defend you,” he said.

  “What about the rebellion? Isn’t it more important than me?” She could see from the doubt in his eyes that she was getting through to him. “If Calhoun’s gone, the rebellion can’t afford to lose Picard and O’Brien, too!” She grabbed his shirt with both hands. “Losing all its leaders in one fight? Tuvok, they’ll never recover from that! Never, no matter how many super toys Memory Omega has. If you don’t let me save them, the rebellion dies, here and now.”

  He took his hand off the escape pod controls. “Your point is logical.”

  “Tuvok, I’m begging you. Turn off the chip in my head. Let me help.”

  “As the only alternative is to accept the failure of everything for which I and millions of others have fought and sacrificed…” He let that thought trail off as he took the psi-damper control device from his pocket. And pressed its master switch. “Our fate is now in your hands, Kes.”

  Her power returned in a dizzying rush, as if a titanic dam that had been holding back an ocean was shattered all at once. Overcome with vertigo, she staggered backward and slumped against a bulkhead for balance. As she recovered her composure, the flat barren universe in which she’d been held prisoner vanished and gave way to one that was luminous with psionic energies and invisible forces. Thousands of minds, gravitational waves, cosmic strings, and extradimensional pockets of dark energy all were hers to wield.

  She flashed a diabolical smirk at Tuvok—then bent the cosmos to her will.

  During his long career in the Obsidian Order, including more than two decades as the intelligence agency’s director, Enabran Tain had rendered many acts of patriotic service to the Cardassian Union and the Alliance, none of which would ever be publicly known. It did not trouble the obese, thick-jowled old Cardassian spymaster that he would never receive honors or accolades for any of those many accomplishments—because he was about to guarantee his place in history as the one who crushed the Terran Rebellion in one fell swoop.

  “All ships, target the Enterprise and the Defiant,” Tain said. “Keep the other ships at bay, but focus on destroying the two lead vessels.” His subordinates nodded, then parroted his orders down the chain of command.

  Watching the pair of hobbled rebellion ships loom large on the main screen inside the combat information center of the C.D.S. Koranak, Tain felt vindicated. He had broken half a dozen laws by authorizing the Obsidian Order to build its secret fleet of warships, but now that the majority of the Cardassian military had been left in ruins by the incompetent leadership of Supreme Legate Damar and his stooges on the Detapa Council, only Tain’s forces stood between the Union and its enemies. And, as he was about to demonstrate, the Obsidian Order was better equipped to defend Cardassia’s interests than the Central Command had ever been.

  Pythas Lok, a slender and youthful-looking senior operative who served as Tain’s second-in-command, approached the director and confided, “All ships report weapons lock—but Gul Drocan asks whether you wish to offer the Terrans terms of surrender.”

  “Why? So they can stall for time and find a way to escape?” Tain growled in frustration. “No terms will be offered. Order all ships to open fire, and when this battle’s over, have Drocan eliminated.”

  Lok dipped his chin and backed away. “Yes, sir.”

  Tain turned toward the main screen, eager to see the rebellion end in fire. Its agents had slain his illegitimate son, Elim Garak, years earlier. Though Tain had never been able to risk acknowledging Garak as his scion, not even to Garak himself, he hated the rebels for denying him the chance to ever set things right.

  Now you die, he raged behind a malevolent glare.

  The Koranak flew apart, and the air was ripped from Tain’s lungs as he was hurled without warning into zero-g vacuum. He was surrounded by a silent storm of twisted metal and flailing bodies cast into space, all scattering like flakes of ash on a volcanic gale. Feeling his blood boil as his vision purpled, Tain saw the rest of his magnificent fleet suffer the Koranak’s fate—dozens of state-of-the-art warships ripped to shreds as if by the invisible hands of the gods. Moments later, the same merciless power crushed the remaining Klingon ships into flotsam.

  Surrendering to the cold grip of space, Tain spent his last ounce of strength composing curses he could never utter.

  O’Brien pulled himself off the deck and massaged the wound on the back of his head. His hand came away sticky with half-dried blood, and he wiped it clean across the front of his shirt. Looking around the Defiant’s smoky bridge, he saw Tenmei at the helm, pressing a hand over the bloodied left side of her face. Tigan and Perez were at the weapons console, conferring in excited whispers. He stepped over a chunk of wreckage and staggered toward them. “What’s going on?”

  The two women looked up, their faces bright with hope and disbelief. “It’s over,” Tigan said. “Something tore the enemy ships to pieces.”

  “Care to be a bit more specific?” He hunched over Perez’s left shoulder while Tigan leaned over the right.

  Perez shook her head. “I wish we could, but we have no idea what happened. One minute the Cardassians had us dead to rights, and the next—we’re floating in the middle of an Alliance starship graveyard.”

  The news drew an amused grunt from O’Brien. “Every time I think Memory Omega’s run out of tricks…” He shook his head and patted Perez’s shoulder. “Hail the Enterprise and put it on-screen.” He stepped away and situated himself in the center of the bridge, facing the main viewscreen. As the image switched from the Enterprise’s battle-torn hull to its half-demolished bridge, O’Brien marveled that any of its crew were st
ill alive. “Captain Picard? Are you there?”

  Picard stepped into view. His face was smudged with soot, and a nasty laceration had bifurcated his left eyebrow. “Yes, General. Are you all right?”

  “Thanks to you, we are. I don’t know what you did to that fleet, but I wish you’d done it a hell of a lot sooner.”

  His praise seemed to befuddle Picard. “General, we had nothing to do with stopping the Cardassian fleet.” He traded a worried glance with K’Ehleyr. “In fact, we were just about to ask you what happened.”

  Confusion turned to alarm in O’Brien’s imagination. “But if it wasn’t us…”

  The comm signal wavered and broke up. Behind O’Brien, Perez protested, “Something’s jamming all frequencies. I can’t—wait, I have an incoming signal.” She turned toward O’Brien and added, “It’s on all channels.”

  He turned back toward the viewscreen as the garbled mess of fluctuating colors and scratching noise resolved into the crystal-clear, rock-steady image of an attractive young blond girl with curiously shaped ears. Her face had an innocent beauty, but the sinister gleam in her eyes belied that sweetness. O’Brien had never seen her or her species before, but he could tell in a glance that the girl was trouble.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  She answered with a haughty arrogance that gave O’Brien chills. “My name is Kes, and I’m the one who just saved your lives—and your rebellion.”

  O’Brien felt as if the girl were staring through him and directly into his soul. He tried to swallow his fear, only to find his throat as dry as the Martian desert. “I guess we ought to say ‘thank you,’ then.”

  The girl sneered, her contempt as cold as space. “I don’t want your thanks. I demand your obedience. As of this moment, you all exist to serve me.” Her smile made O’Brien shiver with terror. “I’m your new empress.”

  34