“Something on the surface of the fragment,” Valeris was saying. “Life-signs.”
Her words were drowned out as Kaj fired another barrage, this time scoring solid hits across the stern of the Chon’m as it banked to draw a bead on them.
The Vulcan worked at the flight yoke, but the Klingon scoutship was more agile than the aging, battle-damaged cutter. Even with Gattin’s inexperienced crew on board, the Chon’m still had the edge.
Flashes of orange chain-fire burst from the muzzles of the disruptor cannons on the scoutship’s wingtips. The bolts of light tore through the failing shields and ripped into the Daughter’s portside fuselage. Impulse power died as a chug of fat blue-white sparks vomited from the thruster grid and the ship fell into an uncontrolled spin. The cutter began a lazy tumble as its internal systems shut down, lumps of debris clanging off the hull.
Vaughn picked himself up from the deck; he had no memory of how he had gotten there. One moment he was clinging to the command saddle, shouting a warning; the next he was lying on the floor, his skull ringing with the pain of the impact. A hand reached for his, the skin warm, and he looked up to find Valeris. The cut on the Vulcan’s face had reopened, and emerald blood lined her cheek.
“Kaj?” he asked.
“Here . . .” said the Klingon, coming to them through a haze of smoke that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. The major’s face was lit by flickers of illumination from malfunctioning display consoles, casting her fierce aspect like the visage of some ghostly revenant. “Perhaps I was wrong,” she told Valeris. “Perhaps today is a good day to die.”
“All the same, I’d prefer not,” Vaughn retorted. He stumbled to the periscope screen; his movements felt light and off balance. “Gravity control must have been hit.”
“Life support remains stable, for the moment,” reported Valeris. “Weapons, navigation, impulse power . . . all negative.”
Vaughn shot Kaj a hard look. “Didn’t we agree I was in command here? You fired without thinking!”
“I thought about it,” she replied. “Hesitation would have been fatal. And I don’t recall any formal declaration as to your command status. Major outranks lieutenant junior grade by a substantial margin.”
“Fatal?” he snapped back. “What, like the situation we’re in now?” Vaughn hammered at the damaged console without success. “Once the Chon’m swings around, we’re dead!”
“Negative.” Valeris was peering into a scanner hood. “The bird-of-prey has disengaged. They’re returning to the fragment.”
“The life-signs on the surface . . .” Kaj said, thinking aloud. “It must be an EVA team preparing the isolytic device for detonation. They’re going back to get them.”
“We can still stop Gattin.” Valeris stood up. “The Daughter’s transporter system is operational. We can beam to the fragment, find the Thorn before they trigger the device.”
“And get our molecules scrambled on the way,” Vaughn retorted. “All those mineral compounds in the debris belt will play havoc with a transporter signal.”
Kaj looked up from a systems diagnostic panel in front of her, and a wolfish smile played on her lips. “There’s another way,” she said. “But we need weapons and environment suits, and we must move now.”
“What about Rein?” said Vaughn. “We’re just going to leave him in the brig belowdecks?”
“Oh, he’s still alive, I made certain of that,” said the major, moving toward the hatch. “When we’ve dealt with Gattin and the others, we will be back for him. If this wreck holds together until then.” The Klingon halted at the threshold. “Are you coming?”
Vaughn closed his eyes and heard himself say the words. “Lead the way.”
Praxis Ring
Qo’noS Orbit
Klingon Empire
The escape pod was little more than an armored drum equipped with a cluster of thruster nozzles and a rudimentary life support system, at best a last resort for fleeing the Kriosian cutter if destruction was imminent.
It was a poor substitute for a ship’s launch or shuttle, and the capsule spun through the darkness before landing unceremoniously on the surface of the largest planetesimal fragment. It touched down in a puff of dust and skidded to a halt, rolling over. The pod began to drift back off the fragment, the scant gravity of the massive scrap of rock too low to hold it. Before it could float away, the oval hatch along the aft snapped open and three figures in Defense Force–issue space suits spilled out. It was an ungainly, disordered exit, but they made it clear, scrambling into the lee of a jagged spike of granite.
Vaughn watched the capsule glide serenely back out into space, losing it in the jumble of the debris belt. “Some ride,” he noted. “Now I know what being shot out of a torpedo tube must feel like.”
“We’re here and we’re alive,” Kaj said over the helmet link. “That’s all that matters.”
Valeris stood up, with care. The angular visor of her environment suit slowly turned this way and that. “I see no sign that our arrival was observed.”
“The Thorn’s attention will be on their weapon,” Kaj replied. “We must make use of the advantage while we still possess it.”
Vaughn nodded wearily. “All right. How do we activate the gravity boots on these outfits?”
Kaj nodded, her helmet exaggerating the motion. “Orange icon, right side of the visor.”
“Got it.” The lieutenant felt the bulky overshoes suddenly grow heavier as the grav-plates in the soles came online. The plates in the boots were attached to the surface of the planetesimal. He took a few practice steps. The Klingon military suits were more like battle armor than the protective gear used on Starfleet ships, and the movement was sluggish; it also didn’t help that the outfit he was using was a half size too big. Vaughn had to lean into every move he made, or else his body shifted but the suit did not.
He looked up through the thick, gold-lensed visor and saw Kaj beckoning him. Her suit differed from Vaughn’s and Valeris’s with the addition of a larger backpack module, the function of which he couldn’t be certain. What he was sure of was the curve of dull steel attached to a mag-strip at her shoulder; Kaj had found the bat’leth blade in the Daughter’s equipment locker and immediately claimed it as her own. Vaughn and the Vulcan both had heavy disruptors.
The suits had built-in tricorders, and while they lacked the fine detail of their Federation counterparts, they functioned well enough for the current circumstances. “Life-signs,” Vaughn said, reading the display. He pointed. “That way.”
Kaj loped over the rocky terrain, heading toward a ragged ridgeline. Vaughn followed at a steady pace, breathing hard. It was an effort to be inside the Klingon suit: the environmental settings were all off human standard, too warm, too moist. He glanced around, trying to keep his mind off the petty annoyances. Vaughn looked up past the “horizon” of the massive fragment—up there, the green orb of Qo’noS was visible through a cloud of smaller asteroids, constantly moving as the Praxis shard they stood upon slowly turned end over end. It made him feel dizzy, so the lieutenant put his head down. The rock all around was grey and black—dense, forbidding ground made of sharp planes and angular folds. I’m standing on a stone island in the middle of nothing, said a voice in his head. Vaughn frowned and dismissed the thought.
He dropped into a crouch as he came to the ridge alongside Kaj. Valeris fell in with him, sparing him a quick glance. Her expression was unreadable behind the visor.
“See,” said the Klingon, and pointed.
The ridgeline looked down on a shallow arroyo between two serrated hillsides, a vast wound that had been gouged in the surface of the planetesimal when Praxis had ripped itself apart. Off to one side, on a broad, cracked plate of fused silica, the Chon’m rested amid a haze of thruster gasses and disturbed rock-dust. The wings were raised high, and the drop ramp was open, a wan yellow light spilling out onto the black surface. Vaughn could see figures moving in the glow; they wore the same kind of environment suits,
and their motions suggested a state of alarm.
He gave an involuntary look over his shoulder. “They must know the No’Tahr is closing in.”
“It’s a much bigger ship,” said Kaj. “Igdar will come in slowly. But if we don’t stop these terrorist petaQ, they’ll be running for warp speed before he gets here.”
“They have dug some kind of pit,” Valeris observed, her keen Vulcan eyesight picking out a hollow in the rock. “Several meters from the bird-of-prey.”
Vaughn saw it too. The skeletal shape of a phaser drill, the swan-like emitter head bowed, lay abandoned to one side. Dots of light—illuminator lamps mounted on suit helmets—bobbed like fireflies. A glint of silver caught his eyes, and he felt his gut tighten. “The device is down there. They’ve buried it in the rock.” He swallowed hard. “We have to get to it.”
“I concur,” said Kaj, standing up. She tugged the bat’leth free and spun it around to a guard stance. “I will engage the ones at the ship and give you the distraction that you need.”
“There’s a dozen of them down there,” said Vaughn. “Not good odds.”
Kaj gave a brisk nod. “Be sure to tell Gattin that if you meet her before I do.” The major drew back a few steps and then broke into a swift run. At the last second she threw herself off the top of the ridge and flew silently out over the gap.
Vaughn started after Kaj, too late to stop her. “What the hell is she doing? She’ll fly off into space.”
But then the function of the larger backpack became clear. Kaj did something with her glove, and puffs of white gas spurted from slits in the suit’s shoulders. The Klingon’s gear contained a basic thruster mechanism, and with it she dropped silently toward the knot of Kriosians dithering at the Chon’m’s bow. In the silence of the vacuum, none of them could detect her approach. She raised her blade, coming down like an angel of vengeance.
Vaughn didn’t wait to watch Kaj let loose; instead he beckoned Valeris to the lip of the ridge and they both stepped over, hunching low to slide down the steep incline in clumps of ebony dust. They hit the floor of the shallow rift and he pushed himself into a lumbering run, panting as the heavy suit dragged on his every motion.
Valeris sprinted past him, kicking up clumps of powder where her feet fell. Ahead, Vaughn could see more clearly now the pit the Thorn had dug. A grav-litter was off to one side, surrounded by discarded cables, and the rear third of the isolytic device was visible, projecting from the maw cut in the ground.
A figure in a suit stepped around the inert shape of the phaser drill and the blank face of its helmet jerked in surprise: they had been seen. Without hesitation, Vaughn leaned into a turn and ran headfirst into the Kriosian, the two of them colliding with a heavy, ringing impact.
They went down, and Vaughn lost sight of Valeris as dust billowed up around the two combatants like smoke.
Kaj’s first kill was the man on guard at the foot of the ramp. He must have seen a shift in the shadows cast as she fell, and he looked up just in time to meet the tip of the bat’leth as it went through his faceplate. He fell in exaggerated slow motion as she landed, spinning, slamming the back edge of the weapon into the legs of the Kriosian’s companion.
Another of the Thorn tried to pin her with a spear of light from a phaser, but she was moving faster than he expected and the shot went wide, flashing off the glassy surface of the asteroid. The only sound was the panting of her breath and the grunts of effort as she moved in and attacked in a whirl of blades. It seemed surreal to the woman, the dead silence across the airless landscape as she took down her foes. Kaj was used to the noises of battle, the ripping of flesh and the cries of the fallen. Here, in this moment, it was almost as if she were fighting wraiths who perished without a sound.
Behind her visor, she gave a feral grin. Wraiths or not, she would make the Thorn pay in kind for every drop of Klingon blood they had spilled. If these stony wastes were where she was to meet her end, at least it would be beneath the gaze of Qo’noS and the naked stars.
Snarling, she swung the bat’leth about and attacked once again.
Valeris almost stumbled as she dropped into the phaser-cut pit, her gloved hands unable to find purchase on the walls of the trench. The powerful beam that had torn open the ground had burned off the stone until it was smooth, the surface pitted with tiny cavities. The isolytic weapon lay cradled in the darkened furrow, the metallic shape of the device invasive and out of place among the black rock and powdery grey sand. Access panels along the sides of the object were open to the vacuum, and Valeris saw trains of indicator lights blinking back and forth within.
She recognized elements of her own work in the construction, the components of the firing core visible, suspended in a frame of duranium rods. Bunches of glowing optical cables ran the length of the casing, connecting to a trigger mechanism and other sub-modules that she could not immediately identify.
Valeris found the activation pad, and a flutter of emotion stuttered behind her chest. The device is still in standby mode. She took a breath and reached for it. We are not too late—
A hissing crackle sounded from the communicator bead in her ear, and Valeris winced at the sharp noise.
“You’re too late,” said a severe voice breaking in over the comm channel. A shape moved at the far end of the device, half hidden in shadows, and Valeris turned toward it. Another figure in a spacesuit emerged, and the helmet faceplate depolarized. Gattin’s twisted, snarling face glared back at her. “Run, traitor. Run away while you still can. In a few minutes, this will all be destroyed.”
“You will not die here,” said Valeris. “You are not like the ones Rein duped into giving their lives for the cause. You want to live to see it succeed. Your hatred demands nothing less.”
“What do you know of it, you passionless witch?” Gattin said, advancing. Her hand hovered near the weapon on her belt. “Nothing you say has any meaning. You say it is all logic and reason, but you only twist meaning to be what you wish it to be!” She shook her head. “If there ever was a spark of anything real in you, it was the hate. And you let that fade away. Be proud, Vulcan. You’re as pale and colorless a soul as any of your kind!”
“You have lost,” Valeris told her. “This will end here.”
The words triggered exactly the response she knew they would: Gattin leapt at her, reaching for her throat. It would not be enough for the Kriosian to shoot Valeris where she stood; Gattin wanted to end her life with her own hands.
Vaughn recognized the face of the man called Tulo as the Kriosian struck him with an elbow to the chest, the impact resonating through the suit armor. His adversary was more nimble than he expected, and Elias struggled to keep his balance as he dragged himself back up to his feet.
There was a part of him that wanted to give the Thorn member one last chance to surrender—the part of Elias Vaughn that had been instilled in him by his family and his training as a Starfleet officer. All his life, he had thought—he had hoped—that he lived in a universe where reason could win out. But Tulo and the rest of the Thorn seemed disconnected from reason. They had lost so much and become so saturated with their hatred that an act as apocalyptic as destroying a world was not beyond them.
One look at the feral anger on Tulo’s face was enough to make Vaughn certain of it. This was not a man forced to fight but one who did not want redemption, did not want peace. The Thorn were mirrors of their leader: only death and more death would sate them.
You can’t win, he wanted to say. Hate consumes everything it touches. Violence only breeds more violence.
Tulo drew his weapon and fired a wide shot, answering him. Vaughn slammed into the other man, deflecting the beam up and away. Their helmets clanked against one another and for an instant they were staring into each other’s faces.
The man’s eyes were dead, hollow things.
The weapon wavered between them, pushed back and forth in their shared grip. Vaughn locked his legs and applied steady pressure. Tulo began to weaken.
He knew what was coming and shouted silently behind his visor.
Then the weapon discharged for a second time and the Kriosian went limp, falling backward toward the dust. Glistening jewels of blood scattered from the wound on his chest, flash-freezing into crimson beads.
Vaughn staggered backward and turned away, sickened at the waste of it all.
Gattin screamed and beat at Valeris with her armored gloves, smashing into the joints where the Klingon suit’s protective plates were thinnest. The Vulcan felt the impacts and tried to turn to avoid them, but the woman’s assault was savage and swift. By reflex, Valeris managed a punch to the torso but Gattin shrugged it off.
Adrenaline and fury powered her on, and the Kriosian slammed Valeris into the wall of the trench with such force that her head rattled against the inside of the faceplate. Valeris tasted the metallic tang of blood in her mouth and blinked away bright spirals of pain.
Gattin did not tire. She grabbed Valeris’s helmet in both hands and slammed it into the melt-smoothed rock, over and over. A spiderweb of fracture lines blossomed on the visor, and harsh red icons flared into life, warning of dangerous suit leaks. Valeris flailed against her attacker, but she couldn’t recover. She was dizzy and it was becoming hard to concentrate. I am losing air.
But then Gattin gave her one last shove and pushed her away, letting Valeris slump and collapse to the dusty floor of the furrow.
Over their shared comm channel, the Vulcan heard Gattin panting with effort. The Kriosian went to the open panel on the side of the isolytic device and adjusted a control. New threads of indicator lights blinked on, and in the visible core of the weapon, the power modules glowed brightly.
Valeris struggled to get up, but Gattin came back to her with a swift kick that put her down once again. “Death is the only coin for traitors,” she hissed. “And you’ve earned this a hundred times over.”
Gattin broke into a run and disappeared over the edge of the trench. Valeris felt the broken ribs across her chest move as she shifted. Slowly, she made her way toward the device, each breath she took like razors.
Star Trek: TOS: Cast no Shadow Page 34
