by David Mack
Tuvok handed off his console to a junior tactical specialist. Without question or any show of pride or trepidation, the brown-skinned Vulcan stepped forward and took his place in Sarai’s seat, beside Vale’s. He wasted no time reviewing the latest reports on the XO’s command screen. “Commander Keru’s preparations are nearly complete, Captain. As soon as the away team is ready, we should be able to proceed.”
“Best estimate for the away team’s readiness,” Vale demanded.
“Four point seven minutes,” Tuvok said.
Vale noted the disklike structures that surrounded Husnock Prime, in high orbit above the planet’s equator. “Any activity from the planet’s orbital defense platforms?”
“Negative, Captain. They have remained dormant even as the Breen entered orbit.”
“So much for the Husnock doing our dirty work for us.” She lowered her voice and leaned toward Tuvok. “How would you rate our chances of coming out of this in one piece?”
He telegraphed his doubts with one raised eyebrow. “Suboptimal.”
“Unfortunately,” Vale said, “I’m inclined to agree. Mister Keru, prep the log buoy and launch it before we enter the Husnock Prime system. Set it on a course back toward Rishon, and put its subspace beacon on a twenty-four hour delay, to reduce the risk of the Breen intercepting it before the Ajax has a chance to recover it.”
“Aye, sir.” The Trill security chief carried out the command in a matter of moments, leading Vale to suspect he had anticipated her order and had placed a log buoy in standby mode hours earlier. When he looked up again, he said simply, “It’s away, sir.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
Vale masked her mounting worry by checking the command screen beside her chair one more time. Doctor Ree had confirmed that sickbay was once again clear, he was set to dispatch medics throughout the ship, and that his triage center and surgical suite were ready to receive new patients. An update from Ra-Havreii brought much-needed good news: the ship’s phaser batteries were back at full capacity, and barring any new catastrophes, the torpedo launchers would all be back online by the time Titan reached orbit. As for the shields . . . well, those were still anyone’s guess. Vale shook her head. So much for the myth of engineers as miracle workers.
Under her breath she asked, knowing Tuvok would hear, “Tell me there’s another way.”
He seemed perplexed by her request. “Another way to what?”
“To finish the mission without resorting to violence. To bluff the Breen into surrender. Or a way to access the Breen’s fleet control center remotely and end this before it starts.”
Thoughtful but also reticent, Tuvok was slow to respond. “It does not appear that Thot Tren and his peers have left us any such alternatives, Captain. Nor did the Husnock, with their proclivity for paranoia and protectionism. Much as I share your desire to find a nonviolent resolution to our present dilemma . . . I am forced to conclude no such path is presently viable.”
“Brevity is the soul of wit, Tuvok. Next time, you might just say, ‘We’re screwed.’ ”
“I will grant that what your idiom lacks in precision, it makes up for in concision.” He looked at the image of Husnock Prime, growing larger on the viewscreen. “For what it’s worth, Captain, perhaps we should be thankful we aren’t facing even graver odds in this fight.”
Vale saw the logic in his observation. And something more. She swiveled her chair to look at Keru. “It’s almost go time, Commander. You ready?”
He keyed in his final preparatory commands with a flourish. “Set.”
“And the away team?”
“They need another minute,” Keru said.
“Then let’s use that minute to our advantage.” Vale stood and moved to stand beside Keru. Without asking him, she started keying new information into his console.
Keru backed half a step away from his console. “Sir?”
“Call it a brainstorm,” Vale said. She finished outlining her idea in a flow chart, then stepped aside to give Keru a better look at it. “What do you think?”
Conflicting emotions shifted Ranul Keru’s expression several times in a span of seconds. Confusion. Alarm. Sudden understanding. A malicious gleam. Then another wave of fear.
He looked wide-eyed at Vale. “Captain, this is insane. There’s a hundred ways for it to go wrong and only one way it can go right.”
“I know,” Vale said. “Which means if it works . . . the Breen will never see it coming.”
Twenty-seven
* * *
Walking while wearing an armored orbital skydiving suit was difficult for Sarai under the best of circumstances. Being forced to dodge and sidestep through the Titan’s main shuttlebay to avoid being trampled by an erratic procession of munitions engineers pushing antigrav pallets loaded with quantum torpedoes only intensified her hate of the skydiving suit’s bulk and stiffness.
Nearly every shuttlecraft on the Titan had been mustered onto the deck for flight prep. Shuttle mechanics and engineers surrounded the small spacecraft in tight swarms. Flashes of light and the buzzing of tools droned over the bay’s usual low thrumming of environmental systems and fuel dispensers. Work proceeded at a furious pace in every direction Sarai looked, and the air was thick with the bite of smoke and the reek of chemical fumes.
Nestled in the midst of that bedlam was a lone runabout, the Nechako. It, too, was being tended by a cluster of technicians, who were racing to beef up its shield emitters and strip the safety restrictions from its impulse engines to let it achieve greater sublight speeds. Sarai found it telling that most of the upgrades to the Nechako’s defenses and propulsion were being made at the expense of its weapons system and research modules.
It’s not as if a runabout’s phasers or microtorpedoes are going to make much difference against a Breen dreadnought, she admitted to herself. All the same, it ratcheted up her anxiety to know she and her away team would be hurtling into peril without any means of firing back at the enemy. Well . . . not in space, at least.
The other members of her away team stood in a loose line beside the Nechako. As Sarai emerged from the flow of bodies crowding the shuttlebay, the first of her team to see her was the senior security officer, Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa. The Andorian shen snapped, “Attention!”
The line straightened and everyone in it stood tall, their chins held high, with eyes front. Sarai noted their response with satisfaction. Finally, my reputation precedes me.
Sarai walked the line and inspected her team.
At its head stood sh’Aqabaa. Beside her was Sarai’s second-in-command for this op, Lieutenant Ethan Kyzak, a Skagaran man with a lean ferocity to his features. Next was Lieutenant Kershul, their Edosian medic, who looked as ill at ease in her skydiving suit as Sarai felt in her own. Then she passed their mission specialists: cryptolinguist Y’Lira Modan, computer expert Holor Sethe, and Tarkalean combat engineer Ekaru Ithiok, whose facial ridges were so pronounced that Sarai thought they made those of Cardassians look understated.
At the end of the line were the rest of the team’s security force, which consisted of Lieutenant Gian Sortollo, Chief Petty Officer Dennisar, and Crewman Blay Chonus.
All of their skydiving suits had been prepped correctly. Sarai suspected the credit for that likely belonged to the security team. Confident they were ready to be briefed, she turned and paced slowly before them. “I trust you’ve all read the mission profile, yes?” Nods up and down the line. “Good. We’ve acquired a few bits of new intel. The most important of which is that the Breen have pinpointed our target by sending an attack force to the surface to destroy it.”
Sortollo caught her eye. “Commander? Isn’t that unusual for the Breen?”
“Yes, it is. I’d have expected them to separate their forces, and direct two or more diversionary units to conceal their true objective.”
The follow-up question came from CPO Dennisar. “Why didn’t they do that here?”
Sarai chose not to upbraid the Orion non
commissioned officer for speaking out of turn, since their deployment was imminent. “We don’t know, Chief. Maybe they’re under time pressure. Maybe they’re shorthanded. Or perhaps they think there’s no way we can stop them.”
Kyzak raised his hand, then asked, “Do we have an estimate on enemy force strength?”
“At least one full platoon,” Sarai said. “But we might be facing a full company.” She knew what the next question was likely to be, so she added, “And no, I don’t expect to face Breen regular militia. All indications are that we’ll be facing Spetzkar—elite commandos.”
That news did not sit well with the team, but no one let their dismay show. Instead, combat engineer Ithiok asked, “How hard a target is waiting for us down there? Do I need to bring something stronger than shaped trilithium charges?”
“I think those will get the job done,” Sarai said. “We just need to punch through a weak spot to get inside the bunker, without destroying anything inside. Anything with a bigger kick than trilithium would probably shred us along with the target.” Her next remarks she directed at the team’s security personnel. “Our primary objective is to defend Modan and Sethe, and get both of them alive into whatever passes for that bunker’s control center. Our secondary objective is to deny the Breen access to the bunker or, if they beat us inside, to neutralize them without harming the facility—and to do so before the Breen can damage the control center.”
Security guard Blay lifted a hand. “Sir? Do we think that’s their objective?”
She nodded at the young Bajoran man. “We do. Though it’s possible they might hope to use it to seize control of an even greater number of Husnock resources, our analysis suggests it’s more likely they’ll try to destroy this facility in order to protect those assets they’ve already captured, and to deny foreign powers any means of stopping them.” To the rest of the team she added, “Any more questions?” Silence and stern faces were her cues to wrap up the pep talk. “Then here’s how this is going to go. We’ll deploy in the Nechako when Captain Vale gives the order. The Titan and her support craft will do their best to provide us with covering fire while we make our run toward the planet. If we can reach the surface in the Nechako, we will. If we can’t—” She gestured at her own skydiving suit. “That’s what these are for. Everybody make a final check of your gear. You should each have a type-two phaser, a phaser rifle, some photon grenades, and spare power packs. And make sure your holographic goggles are working—we’ll need them to see the Spetzkar if they engage their armor’s chameleon circuits.”
Ithiok held up her goggles and frowned at them. “Are we sure these work?”
“No,” Sarai said, “but I’m positive that not using them will get us killed. So make sure yours is fully charged, then finish suiting up and get in the runabout.”
Sarai coaxed and shepherded her team inside the Nechako. She knew the goggles had only a fifty-fifty chance of penetrating the Breen’s shrouding armor—far better odds than the runabout had of reaching the planet’s surface intact, or than the away team had of surviving a free fall from orbit followed by a low-altitude combat chute opening and high-speed landing on top of a bunker being stormed by elite Breen military operators. The only thing she really knew for certain was that her away team would be better off not knowing the odds.
For one foolish moment, Vale had entertained the optimistic side of her nature. She had dared to hope that the absence of the Kulak from the Titan’s sensors or its viewscreen might mean that Thot Tren had chosen to cloak and retreat rather than force a confrontation. Then, just before the Titan had finished its first orbit of Husnock Prime, the Kulak had emerged from its cloak dead ahead, its fearsome silhouette framed by the planet’s two large moons.
So much for getting out of this without bloodshed, she thought.
“Mister Keru, angle shields toward the Breen,” Vale said, knowing that the Titan’s power grid was compromised and unable to provide adequate protection to all sections of the ship at once. “Target all weapons on the Kulak. On my order, fire at will and for effect.”
“The Breen are locking disruptors,” Keru reported.
Beside Vale, Tuvok checked his command screen. “Helm, set evasive pattern Kilo-Red, followed by attack pattern Echo-Six.” A tap on his screen opened an intraship comm channel. “Bridge to shuttlebay control. Stand by to launch all craft.”
“Confirmed, bridge,” answered the shuttle control officer. “Standing by.”
Tuvok muted the channel. “Captain, do you wish to offer terms to Thot Tren?”
Vale tried to be calm, but she clenched her jaw and white-knuckled the armrests of her command chair. “No, Mister Tuvok. I think we’re past the point of talking.”
As if punctuating her thought, a crimson flash filled the viewscreen, then a crash of detonation against the Titan’s shields juddered the ship and dimmed its lights and companels.
“Shields holding,” Keru reported.
“Return fire,” Vale said. “Give ’em everything we’ve got.” She looked at Tuvok to add, “Launch our fleet of pests.” The Vulcan nodded and relayed her command to the shuttle control officer. On the viewscreen, the Titan’s phaser beams seemed to crisscross one another as they slashed across the Kulak’s shields, dimpling its weaker spots—which were immediately targeted by salvos of quantum torpedoes, which flared white and knocked the dreadnought a few degrees off of its course. Vale couldn’t help but smirk: You felt that, didn’t you, you bastard?
Tuvok issued new maneuvering orders to Lavena as, on the viewscreen, the narrowing gap between the Titan and the Kulak flooded with Starfleet shuttlecraft, shuttlepods, and other small auxiliary spacecraft—all speeding in wild corkscrew maneuvers toward the Breen ship, with their phasers firing nonstop. It pained Vale to sacrifice all of Titan’s small support craft this way, and not just because she knew how much pride Admiral Riker had taken in naming them when he had been the captain of the Titan. Those vessels, all named by Riker for revered Terran jazz musicians, had been integral to so many missions that Vale had come to regard them as if they were old friends—the Mance, the Coltrane, the Gillespie, the Tillotson, the Ellington, the Davis, the Basie, the Marsalis, the Fitzgerald, the Armstrong—all hurtling now in a desperate bid to buy the Titan and its vulnerable away team a few precious seconds of cover.
Vale nodded at Tuvok. “Now.”
He thumbed open the channel to the shuttlebay. “Launch the runabout.”
Too spun up to stay in her chair, Vale sprang forward. It felt good to stand. “Rager, keep a sensor lock on the runabout, we’ll have to cut this way too close for it to work.”
“Already tracking them,” Rager said, her fingers working with grace and speed at the operations console. “Standing by for—”
“Weapons lock,” Keru announced. “They’re targeting the Nechako.”
“Distract them,” Vale said. “With prejudice.”
Keru keyed in a command on his panel. “Triggering . . .”
Each of the shuttlecraft executed a microsecond jump to warp speed—just enough to slip past the Kulak’s targeting sensors and right up to its shields—where they all detonated at once, each consumed by the blue-white fire of a trio of quantum torpedoes secured inside their passenger compartments. Jolted off course and into an erratic tumble-roll by the blast, the Breen dreadnought looked almost incapacitated—
Until it resumed firing disruptors in the runabout’s general direction.
“Their shots are wild,” Keru noted. “They must be using manual targeting.”
“Then this is the away team’s best chance for escape,” Vale said. “Titan to Nechako: Increase your speed. Put as much distance between you and the Kulak as you can!”
Sarai replied, “Negative! We’re already at top speed for atmospheric entry.”
“Nechako, if you don’t accelerate—”
Keru cut in, “The Breen have regained targeting. They’re locking on to the runabout.” He tapped the firing pad for the phas
er banks and harassed the dreadnought to draw their fire.
Even as phaser beams from the Titan pummeled the Kulak’s shields, Vale knew it would not be enough to stop the Breen from vaporizing the runabout. “Rager, now!”
“Trying,” the operations officer said. “The Breen are jamming us! I can’t get a lock!”
Tuvok reported, “The Nechako has breached the upper atmosphere.”
“Kulak is charging to fire,” Keru said. “We’re out of time!”
Vale was desperate, and she didn’t care who knew it. “Rager? Talk to me!”
“Coordinates are still fuzzy. Radowski’s trying to—”
Searing beams of red energy from the Kulak sliced through the atmosphere of Husnock Prime and found the Nechako. It took only a single salvo to collapse the runabout’s shields and blast the tiny starship into fire and dust. Less than a second later a black streak of smoke and debris scratched like a scar across the sky of a deserted world.
Vale felt like she had been gut-punched. It took all the courage she had to keep standing as Tuvok reported with dry precision, “The runabout has been lost, Captain.”
Lavena looked up from the helm and over her shoulder at Vale. “Captain, the Breen are coming around for another pass at us. Should I initiate evasive maneuvers?”
At tactical, Keru remained stoic as he delivered bad news. “The Kulak is charging all weapons and targeting us. Orders, Captain?”
In her heart, Vale felt sick, paralyzed, and demoralized beyond recovery. Then she drew a deep breath and remembered who she was: not just a Starfleet officer, but a starship captain. This might be her day to die, but if it was, she planned to take her enemies into the darkness with her.
“Helm,” Vale said, “evasive pattern Sierra, then attack pattern Victor. Mister Keru, tell the lower decks to keep working as ordered, and move the Ottawa into position. If it’s a fight the Breen want, then that’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
