Star Trek® Cast no Shadow

by James Swallow

  “Valeris has information about the group we suspect are the true architects of the Da’Kel attack,” said the commander. “The Q’unat clan is just a blind, a smokescreen for someone else. SeDveq.”

  For a moment Igdar was struck speechless; then he roared with harsh, braying chugs of laughter. He brought his fist down on the table with a flat crack and the cold amusement on his face vanished like vapor. “Do you think we are fools?” he growled. “You dredge up a name from the past, a pathetic rabble of terrorists hunted down and exterminated years ago?”

  “Like the House of Q’unat?” Vaughn broke in. “Weren’t they also considered to be destroyed?”

  Igdar paid no attention to the interruption. “Those Kriosian agitators were dealt with when they attempted to oust the Klingon peacekeepers sent to their world to maintain stability in the region . . . Nothing of them remains! And if any of them did still exist, they would be no threat to us . . . SeDveq can be nothing more than a spent force at best.” He shook his head. “No. The renegades of Q’unat are the agitators who caused this atrocity, and to claim otherwise is idiocy! I expected better from Starfleet, Captain Sulu. You have allowed yourself to be taken in by whatever lies this Vulcan witch has spun . . . Their kind are no better than their Romulan cousins! What did she want in return, eh? Her freedom?” The general glared at them all. “Did you promise her that?”

  “I have no cause to lie,” Valeris insisted.

  “Give her to me,” Igdar said, studying Valeris with a feral gaze. “I will encourage her to speak the truth.” He leaned closer. “They say Vulcans do not feel. That, too, is a falsehood. They merely require a more . . . forceful approach to interrogation.”

  “You’re not taking her anywhere.” Valeris turned to see Vaughn staring down the Klingon commander. Of all the things that had happened since she entered the room, the lieutenant springing to her defense was perhaps the most unexpected. “Answer me this, General,” he went on. “We have evidence that connects to the Kriosians, and not just the word of this prisoner. Why are you so quick to dismiss it?”

  “I know the reason why,” said Valeris.

  “Oh?” Miller turned to look at her. “Care to enlighten us?” Valeris looked Igdar right in the eye. “Because the general is afraid.”

  I.K.S. ho’Pung

  Da’Kel System

  Mempa Sector, Klingon Empire

  The ho’Pung was barely a starship; having served the Klingon Empire with a completely undistinguished career since before the current crew were born, the elderly K-6 gunboat, while warp-capable, was so unreliable that it had been relegated to service as a patrol ship within the confines of the Da’Kel System. It had been this very quality that had spared the lives of the ho’Pung’s crew when the first isolytic device tore through the utility platform and the ships nearby. The gunboat’s temperamental engines suffered an overheat and left the vessel drifting out beyond the orbit of the third planet—and so gave the handful of men and women aboard a ringside seat for the destruction that was wrought.

  They had been among the first on the scene, along with other ships too far out to be clipped by the blast wave or lucky enough to have survived the detonation. What they saw there hardened their hearts, turning them—like any true Klingons—to thoughts of fierce reciprocity. The crew of the I.K.S. ho’Pung took on the mission they were given—to patrol the system as they always had—but now they were watchful for serpents hiding in the darkness. They did so, and hoped they would have the chance to face their new enemy. Just the night before, in the tiny mess room, the crew had discussed in gory detail the revenges they would inflict, if only the opportunity was presented to them.

  Then Bekk T’Agga had led a landing party down to Da’Kel II’s largest moon to follow up on an anomalous sensor reading. Now she was overdue.

  Kobor, the officer who was the gunboat’s captain, glanced at Junhir, his second. Junhir leaned close to the scanner console that took up most of the ho’Pung’s narrow command center; less a bridge, more a roomy cockpit, it still felt cramped and uncomfortable.

  “She’s missed the check-in,” he told Kobor. “T’Agga does not respond to any signals.”

  “Can you read them down there?” Kobor glanced at his own screen, showing the clouds massing above the surface of the Gion moon.

  Junhir made a spitting noise and swore under his breath. “Fek’lhr take this piece of garbage!” He slapped the palm of his hand on the panel. “It’s a miracle these sensors can even register the planet! A lens and the light of a flaming torch would work better.” He shook his head. Junhir had been poring over the garbled readings for some time—something that resembled the ion trail of a shuttlecraft had appeared there for a brief moment, but he couldn’t be certain . . .

  An indicator flashed on the communications board and Kobor turned toward it, opening a channel. “This is the ho’Pung. What do you want?”

  For a moment Kobor thought the communications gear was broadcasting nothing but static; but then he realized that the hissing sound he was hearing was rainfall. Something like a faint animal cry issued out of the speaker grille, and his jaw stiffened.

  “T’Agga?” he asked urgently. “T’Agga, is that you? Answer me!” Kobor glared at Junhir. “Sensors!” he barked. “Get me a lock-on, damn you!”

  When the bekk finally spoke, he could hear how broken she was. Her voice was bubbling with fluid, almost suffocated. “Shuttle,” she managed. “Danger . . .”

  “I knew it!” snapped Junhir. “I knew there was something out there! I saw the trail, heading out to the next orbit . . .”

  “Danger,” T’Agga repeated, and then she fell silent.

  Kobor stared at the console, the grim certainty of what he had just heard settling upon him. The landing party, his crewmen, were dead—and now he had to make sure they had not spent their lives in vain. He stabbed at the panel, opening a new channel. “This is patrol vessel ho’Pung to command ship No’Tahr. I have a priority alert, repeat, a priority alert . . .”

  U.S.S. Excelsior NCC-2000

  Da’Kel System

  Mempa Sector, Klingon Empire

  General Igdar did something entirely unexpected: his craggy, scarred face split in a wide, fanged smile that was utterly without warmth.

  “I have killed a room full of men for lesser insults than the words that petaQ has just uttered,” he told them. “Believe me when I tell you that it is taking every iota of my considerable will not to cross this room and rip her bloody throat open with my bare teeth.”

  “Oh, I believe him,” muttered Sulu.

  “The captain makes a good point,” said Miller. “Our honored guest here doesn’t look all that afraid to me.”

  “It is said that a true Klingon fears only dishonor,” Valeris noted, the hint of a sneer creeping unbidden into her voice.

  “You dare quote the teachings of Kahless?” Kaj said darkly.

  Valeris went on. “Is it not true, General, that the families of the Q’unat and Igdar clans were once staunch allies?”

  If the general had been enraged before, now he became livid. “Ancient history, long since turned to dust!” he spat.

  “It is true,” said Kaj. Her aspect changed: now the Klingon woman was listening, paying attention.

  “The House of Q’unat became rivals to the general’s family, but a victory over them was never decisively achieved.” Valeris gave a sniff, lecturing the room as if she had a lesson to teach them. “The opportunity to redress that balance has come to pass now. The general fears it may slip away from him if he does not pursue it quickly enough.”

  “You know nothing of my clan or Klingon ways,” Igdar retorted.

  “I know enough,” Valeris told him. “And consider this: If this information is clear to me, then what if it is clear to another?”

  “To someone laying a trap that they know the general would chase . . .” said Vaughn.

  “No matter where it led . . .” Kaj spoke quietly.

  But Igd
ar was on his feet once more. “I will indulge this parade of insults and absurdity no longer. I am leaving this ship before I commit murder.” He stepped away from the chair and nodded to his men, who gathered to him. “You have wasted enough of my valuable time, Sulu. You will take the Excelsior to the orbital coordinates provided to you, and you will remain there until such time as I give you the command to leave.”

  “General—” The captain stood, holding out a hand.

  “If you deviate from this directive in any way,” Igdar snarled, “I will have your vessel’s engines blown out from under you and see this ship towed back to the Neutral Zone by tugs. Do I make myself clear?”

  Whatever answer Captain Sulu was about to give, it died in his throat as a lightning-bright flash of energy lit the observation room through the tall windows. Valeris spun to see a streak of coruscating energy lance out from one of the destroyers that had escorted Excelsior in from the border. The beam flashed silently through the dark, and the Vulcan had the brief impression of a small craft fleeing the attack, moving at high speed toward the debris zone.

  “There—” began Kaj, pointing toward the target.

  Then the alert siren began to sound, and Commander Aikyn’s voice issued out of the intercom panel. “Red Alert! Red Alert!” he called. “Captain to the bridge!”

  Shuttle Suy’rov

  Da’Kel System

  Mempa Sector, Klingon Empire

  The panel above Seryl’s head blew out in a cascade of sparks, and acrid smoke swirled around the cargo shuttle’s cabin. He blinked furiously, afraid to take his hands off the flight console to wipe his eyes, even for a second. That last disruptor blast had almost consumed the shuttle, and it was more by luck than judgment he had been able to avoid it.

  He didn’t register the voices shouting at him over the communications channel—not the words, only the tones of the roaring Klingons. They were cursing him, threatening him, warning him of his imminent death, but their demands meant nothing to the old man. He was beyond the point of no return now, and nothing they could say or do would change what was about to happen.

  Out past the blunt prow of the shuttle, the great slick of wreckage from the first attack was spread out across space. The first few tiny fragments of debris were already sparking off the navigational deflectors. Ahead of the drift of ruins, Da’Kel III’s surface was defined in shadow, the curve of the world deep in its night cycle.

  Seryl would bring them a new light down there, a beacon that would illuminate the tyrants and show them the cost of what they had wrought on his species.

  Another torrent of energized particles cut the darkness, a near-hit ripping open the cargo shuttle’s port-side engine nacelle with a shocking rumble of broken metals. Seryl felt the craft heave to one side and enter a spin, the artificial gravity in the deck plates fading away. He was dimly aware of Cadik’s body floating free somewhere behind him, moving as if he were still conscious.

  Dazzled by the blast, Seryl felt his hands slip over the console and find the remote activator unit Rein had given him at their last meeting. He had clamped it to the canopy to keep it within easy reach.

  The patterns of buttons and switches were committed to his memory, so he did not need to look at them to enter the correct activation code.

  His last thought was of Cadik. I hope the boy did his job correctly.

  • • •

  U.S.S. Excelsior NCC-2000

  Da’Kel System

  Mempa Sector, Klingon Empire

  The doors to the bridge hissed open and Sulu led the way, racing to the center seat even as Commander Aikyn got to his feet. At his side, Lieutenant Commander Akaar cut away to the tactical console.

  “Status?” Sulu ordered.

  “An alert went out across the Klingon general comms channel, sir,” said the first officer. “Something about a fugitive shuttle. Then they started shooting.”

  Igdar, Kaj, and the rest of their party were right behind the captain, and the general made a growling sound. “Another attack?” He looked at Kaj. “Contact the No’Tahr—now!”

  Valeris watched the moment unfolding, shifting to place herself out of arm’s reach of the Klingons, should they suddenly decide to take their frustrations out on her. Miller and Vaughn flanked her, but both of them had their attention firmly set on the main viewscreen.

  “I have the target,” reported the helmsman. “Klingon F-type cargo shuttle, quad six, moving erratically at high impulse. Two life-signs aboard, one very weak . . .”

  “Are we in a position to intercept?” said the captain.

  “No!” grunted Igdar. “You are not to interfere with this!” On the screen, flashes of light tore past, cutting the darkness around the fleeing craft. “They must be destroyed before they strike again!”

  Sulu ignored him, addressing his officer. “Lojur, can we get a tractor beam on that shuttle, yes or no?”

  “We can try,” said the Halkan. His hands danced across the console and the Excelsior pushed forward, closing the gap.

  “What are you doing?” Igdar demanded. “My ships will not hold their fire if you enter the engagement zone! That shuttle is a danger—”

  “If that ship is being flown by the same people who attacked the utility platform, then we want them alive!” Sulu retorted. “Aikyn! Get us a transporter lock on the crew!”

  “Sir . . .” Miller’s voice held a warning. The commander was craning over the sensor console before him. Valeris turned to see what had caught his gaze and immediately recognized the waveform on the scanner screen: a new bloom of energy was radiating from the shuttle’s interior. “Reading a power surge . . .”

  Kaj’s face turned ashen. “The weapon . . . It’s the same weapon!”

  “Confirmed,” said Aikyn. “Isolytic energy building to critical onset.”

  “Shields up!” Sulu ordered. “Lojur, veer off!”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Destroy them!” Igdar shouted. “Do it now!”

  “The subspace field is fogging the targeting sensors,” said Akaar with a frown.

  The detonation came like a tiny, brief supernova. A flash of punishing white light flared across the darkness and threw stark shadows across the Excelsior’s bridge. Valeris flinched, her inner nictitating eyelid flicking down to negate the searing glare.

  The pulse of light vanished as quickly as it had come, but in its place there was a seething spiral of unchained energies, spinning and growing. The subspace discharge, the raw power of extradimensional force, propagated outward in an expanding shock-front. Pieces of wreckage left adrift were consumed by it, some liberating new flashes of energy that were sucked into the blast wave.

  Off to the starboard, Valeris saw one of the destroyers make a violent kick-turn, the vessel desperately pivoting to escape the edge of the flare. The subspace shock tore through the starship, stripping plates of metal from the hull and exposing the superstructure beneath, a heartbeat before the D-18’s warp core imploded and engulfed the ship in antimatter fire.

  The wave kept coming, rushing at them, filling the screen.

  Sulu shouted into the starship’s intercom. “All hands, brace for impact!”

  What the first detonation of an isolytic bomb had not been able to accomplish, the second achieved within seconds of reaching criticality.

  The blast that spread from the merchantman had been incorrectly placed, and the full force of its potential had not been achieved. It spent what power it had on consuming Utility Platform loS pagh loS and the vessels attending it. The detonation triggered by Seryl had no such mass to disturb the full expansion of the subspace effect, and once it reached the point of maximum force, it briefly became self-sustaining. The isolytic shock tore open the barriers between this dimension and those underlying it, allowing uncontrolled torrents of energy to spill out.

  Wreckage left by the first blast was consumed by the second, and new deaths were added to the total as ships died in the flash-fire. Unchecked, the storm of unnat
ural force reached out claws of rippling light and raked them across the outer edges of Da’Kel III’s upper atmosphere. The membrane of air cradling the Klingon colony world convulsed and ignited as streaks of fire formed out of nothing. Seen from the surface, lances of flame crisscrossed the skies, bringing hurricanes of heat in their wake.

  The methodology of the strike was a classically lethal and callous act of terror: the use of a weapon to take life, followed by a second strike of even greater power, targeted in the same location to murder those who had come to rescue the victims of the first assault. Da’Kel III’s sky was wreathed in an inferno, a thousand more lives snuffed out in an instant to join those who had perished only days before.

  Once before, when the Praxis moon had been obliterated, the Excelsior had felt the force of a subspace shock wave and survived to tell the tale. But the Praxis blast had been light-days away, the majority of its power expended over time and distance. The isolytic blast’s proximity rendered it an order of magnitude more lethal.

  Valeris barely had time to grab on to the curve of the support rail surrounding the center of the bridge before the discharge connected with the bubble of shield energy protecting the Starfleet vessel. Excelsior resonated with a long, tortured moan of stressed metals as the shock engulfed it, and the Vulcan lost her footing, slipping to the deck.

  All around her, noise and fire and chaos erupted. Electroplasma conduits across the ceiling of the bridge tore open, vomiting great plumes of heated gas. Consoles, their circuit breakers stressed beyond all tolerances, coughed showers of sparks and went dark. She heard cries of pain and alarm from members of the bridge crew; she felt the sickening lurch as the inertial dampeners struggled to compensate for the crippling torsion placed on the starship’s internal structure. Smoke filled the bridge as main lighting died and the hellfire glow of emergency illumination snapped on in its place. A stanchion broke free above her head, and Valeris threw herself aside as a razor-sharp piece of girder impaled the deck.

  Through the cloying, hot haze, Valeris staggered to her feet, still gripping the support rail. She glimpsed one of General Igdar’s bodyguards slumped against a chair, his head turned at an unnatural angle, eyes staring blank and sightless into nothing.