The deck beneath her was trembling, each iteration of the shock wave growing stronger than the one before. Valeris blinked and tried to peer through the searing smoke. On the main viewscreen, through a veil of static, she saw a dark horizon rising to fill the image. The ship was tumbling out of control, caught in Da’Kel III’s steady gravitational pull. From the speed and angle of descent, she estimated they had less than ninety-seven seconds before the Excelsior cut into the fiery edge of the planet’s atmosphere.
The vibration was growing worse, and the rumble resonating through the hull made it difficult to be heard over the confusion across the bridge. Valeris guided herself hand over hand back along the support rail. Somewhere in the smoke, she heard Captain Sulu calling out for his crew. He was biting back pain with every word.
Her boot encountered something on the floor and Valeris almost lost her balance. She glanced down and found herself standing over Lojur, his body sprawled in the well of the bridge deck. Blood covered the helmsman’s face like a stark mask, leaking from his eyes and nostrils.
Perhaps a human might have paused and stooped down to put a finger to the Halkan’s neck to check to see if he was still alive—but to do so would have wasted valuable time, and it would be illogical in placing the potential survival of one crewman over the safety of the Excelsior itself. Valeris ignored Lojur and slipped easily into his empty chair at the helm station. Her hands fell into the correct position over the console without conscious thought on her part. She did just as she had been trained to.
“What the hell?” The security guard Tiber reared up out of the smoke with her phaser drawn and aimed. “Don’t touch those controls!”
But then another figure stepped out of the haze and put his hand on the weapon. “No,” said Vaughn, blood leaking from a gash on his cheek. “Let her do it.” He glared at her, challenging Valeris with each word. “You can do it?”
She nodded and looked away. The layout of a standard Starfleet helm console had undergone some alterations since she had last been assigned to that post, but the variations were minor and would not hinder her. Valeris quickly took stock of their situation: the starship’s shields did not answer the command to raise, and the chorus of alert icons on the display showed that the subspace shock wave had caused widespread shutdowns across most of Excelsior’s primary systems. The warp core was off-line, and the impulse engines were trapped in a restart cycle, sporadically firing bursts of thrust that served only to push the starship deeper into the danger zone.
It all came back to her, effortless and quick. For a brief instant it seemed as if the intervening years had never happened, and she was where she was supposed to be: at the helm of a starship, in control of all that power and potential.
Valeris killed the restart sequence and let the impulse drives go dead. Behind her, she could hear raised voices arguing over what she was doing. She ignored them all, submerging herself in the work of flying the ship. The buffeting became horrific as Excelsior nosed into the interface zone at the edge of Da’Kel III’s atmosphere, but she was ready for it. Careful manipulation of the attitude thrusters kept the ship’s angle shallow, paying off the stresses through the length of the hull rather than collecting them all at the bow.
When the moment came, she reinitiated the firing sequence on the impulse engines and the sublight drives fired true. Valeris eased the throttle control to one-quarter velocity and the starship skipped across the interface zone and away, angling back out into orbital space. Like the passing of a thunderstorm, the tremors in the deck ebbed away, leaving the wounded ship to settle into something approaching equilibrium.
The tension of the moment broke, and Valeris looked up to find Sulu standing at her shoulder; she hadn’t been aware of him at all. “That’s good enough,” he told her. “You can stand down.”
Valeris got to her feet and stepped away from the helm console. The smoke had all but dissipated under the churning of the emergency ventilators, and now the full scope of the damage across the bridge was visible. Several of Sulu’s officers were attending to their crewmates, patching wounds, others pulling modules from damaged consoles. The air was still heavy with the smell of blood and burnt tripolymer.
General Igdar stood at the sensor console, his expression a mixture of barely chained fury and ice-cold shock. “The colony on Da’Kel III . . . ” he began, making a wan gesture at the scanner readouts. “It is in flames. Half the recovery fleet does not respond. Another attack . . . another cowardly assault!” He turned a savage glare on Captain Sulu and Commander Miller. “You brought this about. This was done because of you!”
“You can’t know that!” Miller retorted.
“Open your eyes, Earther!” Igdar shouted, letting his anger cut loose. “They waited for you! They waited until the Federation was here, and then they sent another murderer to strike at us! If you had respected our wishes, if you had not come into Klingon space, this would not have happened!” He pointed at Valeris. “You brought this witch here, and now see what has been wrought!” Before Sulu could respond, the general shook his head and stormed away, moving back to where Major Kaj knelt beside the dead bodyguard. “I rescind my former agreement,” he went on. “Starfleet is no longer welcome here. You will take your ship back across the Neutral Zone and remain beyond the Empire’s borders until this matter is closed.”
“No,” said Vaughn. “You can’t do that! You need us here! You’re looking in the wrong place, damn it!”
“We didn’t make this happen, General,” Sulu insisted. “Chancellor Azetbur—”
“I do not care to hear you any more!” came the reply. “And Azetbur will listen to me when I give her word of what has taken place!” Igdar shook his head. “Take this message to your president, Sulu. Tell him he may demand whatever he wants, but the Empire will deal with this in its own way, and you will have no part in it!”
“And if I refuse to accept that?” said the captain.
Igdar showed his teeth. “Then you will be considered an impediment to Klingon justice, your ship will be seized and your crew imprisoned!” He snatched his communicator from his belt and snarled a command into it.
The glow of a transporter beam shrouded the Klingons and swept them from the bridge. Valeris’s last sight was of Major Kaj, an unreadable expression in the woman’s dark eyes.
8
Seven Years Earlier
Xand Depot
Deep Space
Klingon Border Zone
The transporter beam’s blue-white glow faded into the darkness, and Lieutenant Valeris blinked, her eyes swiftly adjusting to the gloom. The coordinates that had been provided over subspace led them to this derelict, and in turn to the echoing, empty chambers of a decrepit cargo compartment.
She glanced around, allowing her hand to drop to the phaser at her side. With her other hand, Valeris pulled back the hood of her traveling robes and took a deep breath. The air was cold and heavy with the smell of corrosion.
“You don’t look like Starfleet,” said a voice. She turned toward it as a group of humanoids emerged from the darkness and into the chilly light cast by the few flickering illuminators on the high ceiling above. “You look like a tourist.”
Valeris cocked her head. “Then my objective is complete.” The robes she wore were ordinary attire, of the kind that any Vulcan traveling off-world might favor. The phaser and communicator band on her wrist were of Orion design, and the transport ship that had brought her to the depot was registered to a nonaligned world in the Triangle. There was nothing about her that could be traced back to the United Federation of Planets, and Valeris knew that if she was captured or killed, Starfleet would disavow all knowledge of her. Admiral Cartwright had been very clear on that point.
There were six of them, the older male who had spoken and then a woman and four younger men. The man walking in lockstep with the elder made an amused noise at Valeris’s reply, and she immediately labeled him as the group’s second in command.
They came to a loose halt a few meters from her, in a semicircle that was doubtless supposed to be intimidating. Valeris scanned their faces, seeing flesh tones that ran from dusky to pale pink, all of them showing the stipple pattern of pigmentation up along the neck and forehead that was characteristic of Kriosians. Most of them had the humorless, grim aspect of soldiers called to a duty they detested.
“Some of us were not sure you would come,” said the older male. “I am Seryl. We are the Thorn.”
“Say the word.” The woman glared at Valeris, a hard look in her eyes. “Say it, or I’ll kill you.” To emphasize her point, she drew a heavy laser pistol and let it hang at the end of her grip.
Valeris didn’t look in her direction, keeping her eyes on Seryl instead. “Kallisti.”
“You’ll have to forgive Gattin,” said the older man, nodding toward the woman. “Trust doesn’t come easily to her.”
Despite giving the correct password, Valeris noted that Gattin didn’t put the weapon away. “You requested a meeting. I am here. What is it that required a face-to-face encounter?”
Seryl glanced up, toward a window in the roof. The transport ship was visible at the edge of transporter range, a sliver of steel in the darkness. “Tell your admiral that it’s safe, Vulcan. Contact your ship and tell Cartwright to come down here.”
“You are laboring under a mistaken assumption,” she told him. “My . . . commander is not aboard the ship. I was sent in his stead.”
The younger man chuckled again, but Seryl’s face soured. “I told him to—”
“Your communiqué merely stated that you required a meeting,” Valeris corrected. “It did not stipulate who was to attend it.”
“I wanted Cartwright to come here!” Seryl insisted. “This is a matter of conviction!”
Valeris shook her head, even as she sensed the mood in the chamber shifting. “You will never stand in the same room as the admiral,” she told him. “None of you. This matter will be dealt with at a distance, for the good of all parties involved. If you believed otherwise, you were mistaken.”
Gattin muttered something under her breath, most likely a curse of Kriosian origins. Seryl blinked and his jaw worked: the man had been wrong-footed.
His second stepped forward, and it was immediately clear that he understood the nature of the situation. “You’re here because we wanted to look you in the eyes,” he said. “Because a voice across a comlink from the other side of the galaxy can’t give you the color of a person’s soul.”
“A fanciful suggestion,” Valeris noted. “But I recognize the need of emotional beings to exercise what the Terrans call ‘gut feelings.’ ” She opened her hands. “I will have to suffice.”
“Rein,” began Seryl, addressing the younger man, but his second shook his head.
Rein came closer, looking Valeris up and down. She noted that he, too, carried a large pistol, but his was a disruptor pistol of a design favored by officers of the Klingon Imperial Defense Force. He saw her looking and nodded. “A spoil of war,” he explained.
Valeris sensed a very real aura of aggression simmering beneath Rein’s cool smile. He reminded her of a feral sehlat, stalking back and forth in front of another predator, daring it to make the first attack. The man was quite capable of killing her at a moment’s notice, she realized. If she said or did the wrong thing, Rein would end her. Where Seryl seemed metered and fastidious, the younger man was pulling at his tethers, barely kept in check by his own drives.
And then a moment of understanding came to the Vulcan. It was Admiral Cartwright who had ordered her transferred from her current posting, Cartwright who had secretly briefed her before sending her to Xand Depot. This clandestine mission, she realized, was as much a test of the will of the Thorn as it was a test for Valeris. If she failed the admiral here, she would prove herself unworthy of his patronage. But if she succeeded . . .
“I’m curious,” Rein said. “You’re a Vulcan. The tyrants say your species is a race of misbegotten pacifists, weaklings who talk away your days instead of living with purpose.” He smiled at her, fishing for a reaction. “Is that true?”
“Tyrants?”
“The Klingons,” Seryl noted.
“Ah.” Valeris shook her head. “The answer to your question is no. The Vulcan people are not pacifists, but neither do we seek conflict. We do not shirk from it if no other method of resolution is available. In our past, my species fought violent wars that led to great bloodshed. However, we rose above the emotions that created that violence and found a unity in the pursuit of logic.”
“Logic, yes.” Rein was nodding. Valeris noted how Seryl had taken a step back, both figuratively and literally, as the young man continued to speak. She noted the shift in the dynamic of the group and filed it away for later consideration. Clearly, no matter how much Seryl wanted to present himself as the leader of the Thorn, Rein was edging him out of that role with every word he spoke. “I’ve heard that your kind eschew all emotion. Which makes me wonder . . .” He turned suddenly and glared at her. “How can we trust someone without passion? This is a battle about hate and revenge, Vulcan. And if you can muster neither, then I have to wonder if your Admiral Cartwright is any better.”
“He was afraid to come here in person,” Gattin sniffed.
“He was cautious,” Valeris replied. “Unlike you, he showed restraint and intelligence. Whereas you have shown your hand.” Gattin’s face grew a sneer, but Valeris kept speaking. “Suppose that we had decided to excise you from this operation? What if there is a Starfleet vessel waiting close by, ready to beam me away and atomize this station an instant later?”
The room grew silent, and Seryl blinked back up at the window. Only Rein’s expression remained unchanged.
“You gave us all we needed to find you,” Valeris added.
“Kill us and ten more will take our places!” snapped Gattin.
“Perhaps so,” said Valeris, “but you will still be dead. And you will never see your world find freedom.”
Rein’s manner shifted and he laughed, the sound echoing. “Oh, Cartwright is no fool. He’s sent us a sharp one!” The younger man nodded again. “I am in this unholy alliance for only one reason, Vulcan,” he told her. “Because I hate the Klingons and I want my planet to be free of them. Of all the terrible things I have had to do toward that end, believe me when I tell you that the deeds I . . . that we do now sicken me more than every kill. But still I embrace this opportunity.” He stepped closer. “I would turn my back on Akadar and the First of All Monarchs if it would see this thing done. Can you comprehend that?”
“I believe so.”
“Good.” Rein’s steady, unblinking gaze searched her face, and Valeris did not turn away. “It is right to say that I do not know the Vulcans. But after meeting you, I think I understand this one.” He aimed a slender finger at her.
“Indeed?”
“You are like us,” Rein said, turning toward Seryl and the others. “She must be. Why else would she come all this way, risk death on an errand like this one?” He turned back, smiling coldly. “Because you want what we want, don’t you?”
Valeris took a moment to frame her reply. Was it that she was disturbed to think that the Kriosian, an emotional being, could be so perceptive? The Vulcan knew that a dark vein of antipathy toward the Klingons lay down in the depths of her self, buried like a seam of poison. She saw the mirror of that in Rein’s eyes, cut loose and magnified a thousandfold.
She pushed these errant thoughts away, dismissing them. “You may ascribe whatever motivations you wish to my actions,” said Valeris. “My only concern is the transfer of the information Seryl promised to deliver at this meeting.”
“Of course.” Rein stepped away, smiling as if he had won some kind of contest.
Seryl snapped his fingers at one of the others and a man passed him a data padd of Klingon design. “Here,” he said, offering it with a terse gesture. “These materials are from Chang himself.”
V
aleris took the device and scanned the contents. There were pages of text in brisk, martial Klingon script, files of data on the initial plans by Chancellor Gorkon to make the historic offer of an olive branch to the Federation. The promise behind these words, of disruption for galactic geopolitics, was enormous. Valeris weighed the padd in her hand, considering it. For a moment she imagined herself at the point of a fulcrum around which potential futures were turning. History was replete with such moments, she reflected, and it was sobering to consider that this could be one of them. Had she not been a Vulcan, she might have allowed herself to have doubts.
“This will suffice. You will be contacted if you are required,” she told them, and tapped the signal key on her bracelet. The transporter beam enveloped her, and Xand Depot became a memory, replaced by the cramped interior of the transport ship.
The crew of the transport didn’t need to hear from her—they knew what to do—and as she stepped into the narrow corridor that ran the length of the craft, Valeris felt the rumble through the deck as the vessel got under way.
She returned to her cubicle-like cabin and worked on the Klingon padd, checking it for tracers, implants, or any kind of malicious software. The work would make the trip back into Federation space pass more quickly and give her something to focus on.
Without it, Valeris was concerned that an emotion would bleed through and affect her performance: anticipation.
She had done what the admiral asked of her: performed her mission flawlessly. Now she would reap the reward he had promised her if those conditions were met.
Since joining Starfleet, there had been only one thing that Lieutenant Valeris had wanted, one posting, one opportunity. But despite her best efforts, despite graduating at the top of her class at the Academy and excelling at every challenge, it remained beyond her reach.
Star Trek® Cast no Shadow Page 14
