On the screen, a Klingon cruiser swept past the bow of the Chon’m, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch.
“What now?” said Miller.
A figure at the gunnery console turned and Vaughn had to look twice to be sure who he was seeing there. It was Major Kaj, except that it was not. Her hair was gone, leaving a bald scalp framing her hard features; the color of her flesh was odd, patches of it lightened and others still the dusky shade she had been when he first saw her. But most strange was the dissolution of her cranial ridges: where there had been defined lines of bone, now there were only a few chevrons of cartilage, and her eyes . . . her eyes were now a piercing green. Kaj was no longer Klingon.
“Vaughn!” Miller called to him, and he snapped out of the moment. “Make yourself useful, Lieutenant.” The commander was pointing at an empty engineering console, and he went to it.
Valeris went with him. “The warp engine,” she said, scanning the Klingon text on the screen.
He nodded. Vaughn’s grasp of written Klingon was basic, but he knew enough to interpret the data. The rain of antiproton energy had crippled the functions of the drive system.
“That’s a new look for you,” Miller was saying as Kaj crossed the bridge, giving up her station to one of her men.
She ignored him. “Gadan! Where did they come from? How could they attack us without warning?”
The stocky crewman at the primary systems console waved at the air as if dismissing a nagging insect. “Don’t know, Major. They appeared out of nowhere. Their firepower is vastly superior to ours.”
Valeris threw a quizzical glance at the Klingon engineer and then stepped away, finding another panel she could use. Vaughn watched her bring up the sensor logs.
“We are being hailed,” said the warrior at the helm console.
Kaj spat out a guttural curse and nodded. “Let me hear it.”
A booming, officious voice filled the room. “Attention, fugitives. You are to stand down and render your vessel inert immediately, under the command of General Igdar of the Fourth Fleet. Any attempt to flee will mean your destruction. Comply now, or we will fire on you.”
“ ‘Fugitives,’ ” echoed Miller. “Damn it, Kaj . . . You said you didn’t see eye to eye with Igdar, but you never mentioned anything about armed ships!” He fixed her with a hard stare. “What are you not telling us?”
“D’iaq,” said the major, disregarding Miller’s words. “Give no reply.” Her expression was stony.
“They will not hesitate,” said the helmsman. “We must escape—”
“No can do,” said Vaughn. “If I’m reading this right, we’ve got at least another ten to fifteen minutes before the engines can reinitialize. What about the holographic veil?”
“What good would that do?” said Gadan. “They are upon us. We cannot escape them . . . We never had a chance.” He looked back at Kaj. “Major . . . Perhaps—”
“Perhaps what?” Kaj’s manner shifted in a heartbeat, from controlled to boiling fury. She took a step toward the engineer’s station, and Vaughn heard silence fall across the bridge as the rest of the major’s crew watched and waited. “Surrender?” Kaj said it like a curse.
“Major Kaj, of the House of Tus’tai.” The voice across the comm channel returned. “Consider yourself under arrest. You have acted in a manner unbecoming to a Klingon warrior. You have deliberately ignored the directives of Imperial Intelligence. You will stand down now, or your crew will suffer for your folly. Respond immediately!”
Kaj glared at the ships on the forward viewscreen. “How did they find us so quickly?” she demanded, scanning the faces in the room. “We left no trace! How did Igdar know?”
Miller faced her. “I’m going to ask you one more time: What are you not telling us, Kaj?”
She wheeled around to glare at the commander, and Vaughn saw her eyes flash. “The charges are correct,” she told him. “After the second detonation, Igdar removed me from the investigation team and ordered me to stand down and return to Qo’noS. He claimed I broke protocol for reasons of personal revenge . . . That I was ‘not operating in the best interests of the Empire.’ As if he would understand the meaning of that!” Kaj looked away, searching the bridge once more. She caught Vaughn’s eye, then turned past him. “My commanders, the general . . . They refused to follow the leads I found, that you confirmed, for no other reasons than petty prejudice.”
Miller watched her carefully. “But it’s more than that,” he said. “This is personal for you, isn’t it? It’s not just about the Thorn.”
Kaj gave a slow, icy nod. “Her name was Kol. Of the House of Tus’tai. My sister, the only living family to share my name. She perished aboard the station in the first attack.” The major’s glare could have cut through steel. “I will have vengeance for my sibling’s death.”
“That’s why you came to us on the Excelsior,” said Vaughn. “Because we’re the only chance you have.”
“I will not be denied,” she growled.
“Major,” said Gadan. “The crew respects your anger and your need, but we cannot fight two battle cruisers! Even now, the general will be vectoring more ships to this location—”
“How do you know that?” Valeris’s question cut through the air.
Gadan snorted. “The convict dares to interrupt me?”
Kaj turned her iron-hard gaze on the engineer. “Answer her.”
He hesitated. “What?”
“How could they have found us, Gadan?” Kaj advanced on him. “We were hidden. There are a hundred ships in the space lanes of this sector. Igdar would have had to chase every single one of them to locate the Chon’m. Unless he already knew where to seek us.”
Valeris indicated the console before her. “These logs indicate that the ship’s sensor dispersal field has been deliberately attenuated. Anyone who knew what to scan for would be able to pinpoint the Chon’m from light-years away.”
Gadan’s face went crimson. “Am I dreaming? Did a Vulcan petaQ just accuse me of being a traitor?”
“Are you?” snarled Kaj. “How many times have you been absent from the ship in recent days, Gadan? Where were you?”
“Attending to my duties—”
“With the general?” asked D’iaq, solemn and quiet. “Swear it is not so, Engineer. Say the words.”
Gadan’s mouth worked, but only exasperated half sounds emerged. Then, with a flurry of motion, he tore at something concealed beneath his console and his hand returned with a heavy disruptor in it. “Curse you all,” he spat. “I have a wife and a family! I won’t follow one woman on a foolish personal crusade . . . I won’t let my clan be disgraced by association with hers!” He aimed the gun at Kaj. “Answer the summons, Major!” Gadan snarled. “Surrender the ship and end your disobedience! You cannot defy a man like General Igdar!”
An alert tone sounded loudly from D’iaq’s console. “Weapons lock,” he reported. “They’re going to fire.”
Gadan’s eyes flicked away from Kaj for a moment. “No . . . No . . . !”
It was all the time she needed. The major flicked her wrist, and something bright and silver flashed across the chamber from a hidden holster in her cuff. A metallic rod buried itself in the engineer’s right eye and he let out a chattering gasp, paralyzed where he stood.
Miller came forward and tore the gun from Gadan’s grip as other members of Kaj’s crew pulled the traitor away.
“Get that off my bridge,” she told them.
“What now?” said the commander.
Kaj dropped into the bird-of-prey’s throne-like center seat. “We fight.”
A ship like the Chon’m, whose martial prowess sprang from guile instead of the brute strength of the D-7s, was not expected to be a formidable opponent. Placed head-to-head with just one of the cruisers and denied its cloaking device, the B’rel-class ship would not win an engagement. Against two, destruction was assured.
The commanders of the cruisers waited for the surrender they knew wo
uld come. Any other response would be suicide.
And so Kaj surprised them both with her defiance. At her order, maximum power was dumped into the impulse drives and the bird-of-prey shot forward, passing under the command pod of the closest D-7 and along the line of its keel. The major ordered D’iaq to elevate the wingtip cannons as far as they would allow, and as the Chon’m shot by, a cascade of blind-fire tore through the other ship’s shields at point-blank range, scoring a dozen hits.
Had the captain of the second cruiser followed protocol, he would have waited to engage the bird-of-prey in clear space. But he was one of General Igdar’s inner circle: he knew Kaj and he distrusted her. The general had made it very clear to the captain that things would be better if the troublesome intelligence agent met with an unfortunate end; if that included her crew into the bargain, then so much the better. The only thing of value here was Kaj’s ship.
The instant his gunner had the first ghost of a targeting solution, he gave the order to fire a photon torpedo. The shot erupted from the prow of the D-7, glowing fire-red like a cinder thrown from a volcanic eruption. The torpedo crossed the distance to the target, and the bird-of-prey saw it coming, veering down and away to avoid the detonation,
Set to a proximity fuse, the photon torpedo exploded clear of the target vessel, but close enough to strike it with the concussion wave, and close enough that the other pursuit ship took a good measure of the blast. The captain cared little for his cohort: it was Kaj he wanted, the major’s head as his kill and the general’s gratitude at his feet.
The Chon’m took the brunt of the explosion and spun away, trailing fumes. The halo of energy protecting it flickered and faded.
“Our shields have failed,” called the helmsman, through the thin wisps of smoke that curled in the air. “They were eager with the shot . . .”
“Not enough to save us from it,” Kaj replied, peering at a console. “Get those barriers back up—quickly!”
Vaughn tried to obey the order, but the Klingon controls were counterintuitive to him, almost as though they were fighting him with every action he took. “Damn this thing,” he muttered under his breath.
Valeris came to his aid. “Use this protocol,” she said, working the panel as if she had been born to it. “It will circumvent the initiator lock-outs.”
“How do you know so much about Klingon systems?” he asked.
“I am a quick study,” she replied. “And I learned early on that it is important to understand the ways of your enemies.”
He jerked a thumb at the main viewscreen. “Our enemies are out there!”
“Perhaps,” she replied. Valeris turned away and addressed Kaj: “The shield emitters will not cycle. Manual override is required.”
“Engine room,” Kaj barked into her communicator. “Status!”
Over the open channel came the sound of beam weapons and the cry of someone mortally wounded. At Kaj’s side, Miller’s face turned grave. “They must have had a boarding party on the pads, ready to beam over the moment the shields collapsed.”
“We can’t allow them—”
Miller waved Kaj into silence and gestured with the phaser he had taken from Gadan. “Don’t worry, I’ll get down there, see what I can do.”
Kaj gave him a nod. “Take Urkoj with you,” she said, indicating the big Orion. “And be careful. We have no idea how many of them came aboard.”
Vaughn looked up as Miller dashed past him. “Commander?”
The other officer threw him a nod. “Hold the fort up here, Lieutenant. We’re in this together now.” Miller vanished through the hatch, the burly Orion at his side.
“We cannot wait for the commander to secure the engine room,” said Valeris. “Every second we are unprotected, we are vulnerable to attack.”
“Again she voices the blindingly evident truth as if we are all simple children,” Kaj snapped. “If you have a solution, convict, speak! Otherwise, be silent!”
“I have an idea,” Vaughn broke in. “Give me main power control at this panel. I think I can divert power from another system and kick-start the shield emitters.”
Valeris raised an eyebrow. “Given your lack of familiarity with these systems, I doubt you would be able to achieve that.”
“Which is why you’re going to parallel me,” he told her. “But we need to do this now, Major.”
“If the human makes a single error, the whole ship will go dark,” said the helmsman, shooting Vaughn a frosty look. “We’ll be adrift. Nothing but a floating target.”
“Second cruiser is coming back around,” shouted one of the other crewmen. “Eight hundred qelI’qampu’ and closing.”
Kaj frowned. “Give the lieutenant what he requires,” she said. “Just be certain of this, Vaughn. If you fail me, your body will strike the deck a heartbeat after hers.” She nodded toward Valeris.
“Right,” he replied. “So. No pressure, then.”
“Six hundred qelI’qampu’ and closing,” came the call.
Vaughn leaned in and stared at the strings of bloodred cuneiform characters teeming on the screen before him. He placed his hands on the panel and went to work.
Despite his size, Urkoj was swift on his big feet, and he charged down the inclined corridor and into the Chon’m’s engine chamber at full tilt. He blasted down a Klingon warrior in full Defense Force combat armor and spun around to engage another in close combat, deflecting blows from a bat’leth with the long stock of his plasma shotgun.
Miller took in the room in a single glance: Kaj’s crew was fighting hand to hand with the boarding party, fists and blades flying back and forth in an angry melee. He fired a shot at a warrior looming over a crewman with a wicked-looking blade, and the Klingon fell. Something blurred at the edge of his vision and he ducked, narrowly escaping the slashing cut of a serrated yan sword. The blade was curved, like some monstrous pirate’s cutlass, and the hand behind it belonged to a towering Klingon with a face that was a web of scars. The yan spun and danced, coming at him again. Miller fired a brace of phaser bolts, but they went wide, and he was too afraid to cut loose with the weapon for fear of a missed shot striking some vital engine component.
The tip of the sword slashed at him and he dodged—but not enough to escape it completely. Miller snarled in pain as the blade made a shallow cut across his bicep, the agony jerking the phaser from his grip. It was lost through a gridded deck plate.
The Starfleet officer threw himself out of the path of the attack that followed, snagging a heavy hyperspanner where it lay atop a tool chest. He brought up the spanner to block the fall of the sword and they connected, sparks flying.
The Chon’m sped away, the thruster grid flaring. Behind it, the damaged D-7 began a sluggish turn to follow, but lucky hits from the disruptor barrage had lit fires on the lower decks, and it was slow to react. The other cruiser had no such concerns, banking as it moved to keep the bird-of-prey centered in the sights of its forward weapons. The Chon’m’s cannons threw a brace of shots against their enemy, but they slammed harmlessly into the D-7’s forward shields, the lethal energy dissipating in flares of radiation. The only advantage the smaller ship could call upon now was its speed and agility, but they could only run so far, so fast.
Lines of disruptor fire reached out, raking claws of flame across the wings of the raptor-like scoutship.
Valeris felt the energy bolt strike the Chon’m as if it were a crash of distant thunder echoing up through the ship. Surge baffles flared in gouts of sooty smoke and fat blue sparks, and she heard Vaughn utter a human curse word under his breath.
“Keep us out of their range,” Kaj ordered. “If they land a direct hit on us, we will be lost!”
“Major,” called one of the other crewmen, a warning in his tone. “I read an energy surge . . . A second boarding party—”
The Klingon had barely spoken the words before three pillars of red light hazed into being at different points on the bridge. Warriors in combat armor and bearing edged weapon
s attacked.
One of them, a female with a wild topknot of night-black hair, was closest to Vaughn, and she threw herself at him, bringing down a blade-chain array that glittered in the gloom of the bridge. The lieutenant barely avoided a sweeping cut that would have opened his throat, but the blunt, heavy weight at the opposite end of the black iron chain followed and creased his scalp. Vaughn grunted in pain and stumbled to the deck.
Then the Klingon trooper came at the Vulcan, bloodlust in her eyes. Some higher, more analytical portion of Valeris’s mind registered the crudity of the weapons the boarding party carried. Phasers or disruptors would have ended any opposition to them within seconds, a handful of precise shots killing anyone who stood in their way; but instead they fought with weapons that were more suited to boarding actions in an age of sailcloth and galleons. There was some logic to the use of such archaic technology, she had to concede—a missed hit from a blade could never open a hull to space—but Valeris doubted that was why the Klingons were using them. They were a race that liked the taste of blood. They wanted to prolong the moment of the kill, savor it . . .
In the close confines of the Chon’m’s bridge, the blade-chain whistled as the warrior woman spun it up into an attack posture. Lacking anything to parry the stroke, Valeris dodged as best she could. The Klingon repeated the pattern she had used on the lieutenant, and the Vulcan kept clear of the blows. As the heavy weight on the end of the weapon hummed past her face, Valeris threw out her hand to catch it.
The barbed orb of black iron smacked into her palm and drew emerald blood. The Klingon tried to yank away the chain, but Valeris pulled back, and for a brief moment the women were in a tug-of-war. Although she was slighter in build than her opponent, Valeris resisted, muscles bunching. Vulcan strength was not to be underestimated.
The warrior spat in fury and brought up her other hand. Valeris saw the glitter of a pronged blade as it rose toward her face. The Klingon had backed her up against a console, and she had nowhere to go.
Then, from nowhere, a patch of stark purple blossomed on her opponent’s chest, and Valeris saw the woman stagger. The Klingon choked, and dark, arterial blood trickled from her lips. Her attacker dropped to the deck, revealing the hilt of a slender throwing knife protruding from the small of her back.
Star Trek® Cast no Shadow Page 17
