Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers

by James Swallow

  Still in a turning fight, Clarion came on as the Tzenkethi warship crossed over the pole of a rocky moon in close orbit around the gas giant. The marauder angled after the Pajul, snapping after the wounded craft for an easy kill.

  “Firing again,” snapped the deck officer, ignoring a cut that streamed blood into his eyes. “Colonel, we’re about to lose shielding fore and aft.”

  “Then put all power to the guns,” came the command.

  “He’s fixated on that scout. We’ll give him something else to think about.”

  Lonnic heard the words but didn’t really take them in. She was terrified, seeing the battle only as fragments, as pieces of the whole. She thought about the men on the Pajul, and in her panic she couldn’t recall the names of any of them. This is wrong. It’s wrong it’s wrong it’s wrong—

  “The scout’s lost motion control!” She heard the shout clearly. “Kosst, they’re going to hit it!”

  In a last-ditch attempt to extend out of the engagement and put some distance between his ship and the Tzenkethi guns, the captain of the prospector scoutship Pajul channeled everything he could spare into his failing impulse motors; but with the death of his engineering officer only seconds earlier, there was no one to tell him that the power relays were about to collapse. Something critical fractured inside the Pajul, and it spun out of control toward the marauder instead of away from it.

  The Tzenkethi ship wrenched over in a punishing kick-turn, but it was too late. The scout impacted the port quarter of the marauder and skipped off the hull, shredding itself. A power surge threaded through the alien ship, and the sallow glow of the vessel’s intercoolers flickered toward shutdown.

  “Pajul destroyed…Target’s shields are down!”

  “What?” Lonnic opened her eyes, expecting the next thing she heard to be the rush of vacuum as the Clarion was obliterated.

  Li was out of his chair, leaning over a sparking console. “What’s the status of the Glyhrond?” he barked.

  “Damaged, but stable. They’re operable, but they’re out of the fight.”

  Lonnic forced her way forward, stepping over fallen stanchions and waving away clots of acrid smoke. “Colonel, what happened?”

  He stabbed a finger at the screen. “The Prophets have decided to hand down some justice, Ms. Lonnic. The Pajul’s sacrifice has tipped the balance.” He blew out a breath and glared at the alien ship. “Damn them, but they’re tough bastards.” He nodded to the deck officer. “Missiles?”

  “Tubes two and three jammed. One and four loaded and ready to fire.”

  She blinked. “You…you’re going to execute them?”

  “They opened fire first, woman. You saw it.”

  “They’re territorial!” she snapped, her voice breaking. “Of course they attacked us!” Lonnic blinked. “Why…What am I saying?” She shook her head, the stink of burning plastic and blood filling her nostrils. “Why am I defending them…If you’re right…”

  Li’s face darkened. “If,” he repeated. “If I am right.” He glared at his deck officer. “Communications. Tell the Tzenkethi to surrender. They won’t be harmed. They’ll be taken back to Bajor under arrest for the attack on the freighter Lhemor.”

  But the crewman wasn’t listening. He called out across the smoke-blackened bridge. “New contacts, bearing two-one-seven mark seven!”

  Lonnic’s heart hammered in her chest. “More Tzenkethi?”

  “No.” Li bent over his console. “Cardassian. A pair of light cruisers. They’re closing…” Fear bloomed inside her at the uncertainty on the colonel’s face.

  “Confirmed,” said another crewman. “Identity confirmed, Cardassian Union warships Daikon and Kashai.” The operator hesitated. “Sir, those two were among the ships orbiting the homeworld when we left.”

  “They followed us?” Lonnic shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  The deck officer came forward. “Colonel, I think they were here all along. Their impulse trail leads back to one of the outer moons of this planet. They must have been concealed in its magnetosphere, hidden from us and the Tzenkethi.”

  Li’s expression turned stony. “What is this?” he spat. “Hail them, right now! I want some answers!”

  The crewman shook his head. “No reply, Colonel. They’re reading us, but they’re not responding.”

  “Then get me Bajor!” he shouted. “Subspace comms, this very second!”

  “Impossible, sir,” said the officer. “The Daikon’s broadcasting a scattering field. They’re jamming all transmissions.”

  Lonnic moved to the damaged, flickering view of the two amber-colored ships on the main screen. “Why are they here?” she said aloud. “The Chamber of Ministers ordered the fleet as a Bajoran response…Have they come to claim the Tzenkethi for themselves?” She thought of Kubus Oak once more. How was he involved in this?

  “Sir!” The deck officer called out again. “Reading energy patterns from the Cardassian ships. Transporter signatures.”

  Lonnic whirled as Li punched up the reading on a console. The colonel’s smoke-dirtied face creased in a frown. “They’re beaming something over to the marauder…Metallic masses. Some kind of container units.”

  Lonnic craned her neck to see the display. On one of the smaller inset screens there was a graphic of the alien ship overlaid with patterns of moving dots. As she watched, the dots began to blink out one by one. “What is that?”

  The blood drained from the deck officer’s face. “Life signs. Tzenkethi life signs. Something’s killing them.”

  Without deflector shields to protect the marauder, there was nothing to prevent the dispersal modules materializing on every deck of the Tzenkethi starship. The octagonal drums were faceted with oval nozzles that snapped open automatically. Under pressure, a fine mist of vapor issued into the thick air of the vessel, the dilution spreading out in a wave. Autonomous hazard protocols in the marauder’s atmospheric systems, programmed to detect and isolate compartments in the event of just such an occurrence, worked sporadically thanks to the battle damage the ship had suffered in the skirmish with the Bajorans. For the most part, the countermeasures were unable to stop the advance of the contagion through the decks of the ship. In its wake, the biogenic toxin left nothing but death.

  In the engine compartment of the Glyhrond, the ship’s captain turned from the stuttering control interface of the vessel’s warp core as a high-pitched whine sliced through the air. He turned and saw the glitter of a matter stream forming and a wash of relief coursed through him. Rescue is coming, he thought. Li was sending over men to help them get his ship back on an even keel. “Thank the Prophets—”

  The words died in his throat as the object in the transporter beam solidified and took on definition. A drum, just under the height of a man, decorated with what looked like Cardassian military sigils. He reached out to touch it as the whine died away, just as latches on the upper surface retracted to present him with a series of oval vents.

  Less than a heartbeat later the captain was on the deck, his lungs leaking from his mouth and nostrils in a stream of black slurry. All across his ship, his crew began dying in the same swift and pitiless manner.

  “Get the shields back up now!” bellowed Li. There was genuine terror in the colonel’s voice.

  “Bioweapons…” husked the crewman. “They’re beaming them in all over the ship!”

  Lonnic was shoved away as the deck officer grabbed at the console next to her. He stabbed at the controls, getting nothing but negative responses. “Deflector shields are inoperative!”

  She stumbled away, half-falling, half-running toward the far side of the bridge; but there was nowhere for her to go, no escape route open to her. “Why are they doing this?” she cried out. Lonnic’s stomach churned as she fought down the urge to vomit on the decking. On the sensor plots the dead hulls of the Tzenkethi marauder and the Glyhrond were like specters, and she imagined them as charnel houses filled with the poisoned dead. The adjutant grabbed
at the communications panel and pressed the transmitter key. “Stop this! I am Lonnic Tomo of the Korto District…Cease your attack, please!”

  Behind her, Li was shouting at his men to seal the bridge’s environmental systems, even as an alert tone sounded over the intercom. Lonnic dropped into the chair in front of the console, ignoring the body of the unconscious operator lying next to her on the floor. She looked down at her hands and, with a physical effort, forced them to stop trembling. The woman marshaled all the resolve she could gather and steeled herself, drawing in the studied comportment that was her usual manner in the corridors of power. Lonnic took a deep breath, and a strange smell touched her senses, sweet and cloying like rotting flowers.

  She spoke into the communicator pickup, an icy calm descending on her. “This is Lonnic Tomo aboard the Bajoran Space Guard warship Clarion. We are under attack by Cardassian vessels. They have already…killed the crew of the Glyhrond and a Tzenkethi marauder, and—” She felt wetness in her throat and coughed, bringing her hand to her mouth. Spots of dark blood dotted her palm. “I—”

  The rotting stink was overpowering her, and she tried to speak but nothing came. Lonnic’s eyes stung and cramps spiked through her, knotting her muscles. From nowhere, an uncontrollable shuddering wracked the woman’s body and a wash of agony came with it. The pain knifed through her and she fell from the seat to the deck. Her vision blurred and darkened as the biogenic toxin burned into the optic jelly of her eyes. The last thing she saw was Colonel Li dropping to his knees, his face a ruin as he wept streams of crimson.

  Prophets, please, Lonnic begged, I don’t want to die out here!

  Her prayer was not answered.

  The troop of black-armored figures stepped into the command compartment of the marauder, picking their way over the heap of alien corpses at the hatch. There were gouges in the metal where the Tzenkethi had clawed at the door as they tried to escape.

  Dal Dukat studied them. As if they would have found somewhere to flee to, he mused. A Cardassian would have met his fate with stoic defiance, not the panic that these creatures had obviously displayed. He glanced at one of his squad. “Ensure you gather all the corpses and have them placed out of the way. We need to retain their biomass.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the glinn. She paused, cocking her head and placing one hand to the temple of her environmental suit’s helmet. “The rest of the sweep teams are reporting in. Engine core and environmental controls are secure. Secondary tiers have been vented to space.”

  Dukat walked forward into the streamlined oval space of the room. “Any stragglers?”

  The glinn nodded, her suit making the gesture into a broad motion. “Some. A few made it to a decontamination pod before the dispersal reached them. They’ve been terminated.”

  Dukat nodded back and studied the ramps that curved up from the lower level of the command deck and inverted to meet the roof of the chamber. The upper surface of the deck was almost a mirror of the lower one, with consoles and oddly shaped chairs distributed in a circular formation. He could feel the faint shift in gravity as he moved closer; to make more efficient use of space aboard their craft, the Tzenkethi used tailored gravitational fields so that walls and ceilings could become work areas. Dukat made a face. He preferred to have all his staff spread out across a single plane; but this operation called for flexibility, so he would tolerate the situation for the duration.

  The glinn was examining the sensor readings from the tricorder built into her suit. “Toxin percentile is now within acceptable limits. The pathogen has burned itself out.”

  Dukat glanced up and saw an identical hesitation in the faces of his boarding party. All of them accepted the glinn’s determination, but none of them wanted to be the first to test it. Dukat smiled coldly and reached up, detaching his visor with a single swift twist of his hands. He folded the helmet back over his shoulders and made a show of taking a lungful of air. All of them had injected heavy doses of a neutralizing agent before they transported aboard the marauder, but it would have done little to save them if a pocket of the deadly germs still lingered.

  The dal tasted the metallic tang of blood in the air. The ship stank of death; it would be another discomfiture to endure until they had completed the mission. One by one, his officers mirrored his actions as Dukat gave the command consoles a cursory examination. The displays showed streams of Tzenkethi script tumbling like waterfalls, lacking the obvious order of a Cardassian radial display. “Get a translation matrix uploaded into these systems,” he ordered. “I want this ship under power and ready to move as soon as possible.”

  “Sir, the engineering team report that the drives are largely intact. Shields will take longer to repair.”

  “Have them take whatever they need from the Kashai and the Daikon to get the job done, men and hardware,” he replied, “but quickly. We have less than a day before the Bajorans are declared overdue.” Dukat turned away and tapped his comcuff. “Tunol, respond.”

  The Kashai’s executive officer answered instantly. “Here, Dal. What are your orders?”

  “You have command now, Tunol. Once we’re done here, I want you to set a course for Bajor, warp three. Make your route a lengthy one, do you understand? The timing of your return to Bajor is critical.”

  “Confirmed, sir,” she replied. “I’ve taken the liberty of preprogramming target strike points into the weapons systems. The Daikon will handle your exfiltration after the attack.”

  He gave an approving nod. Tunol was an intelligent woman and she showed a methodical insight. Dukat had been quietly pleased with her utter lack of qualms when he outlined the scope of the operation to her. “Good. I’ll supervise the transfer of command from here.”

  “Dal,” she added. “The Bajoran derelicts…Without power, they’ve been seized by the gravitational pull of one of the gas giant’s moons. Shall I take them under tow?”

  “No.” He glanced at the glinn. “You. Weapons?”

  “The plasma cannon will be operable in short order, sir.”

  “See to it.” He turned back to the communicator.

  “Tunol? Have the cruisers take some distance from those Bajoran scows. We’ll obliterate them before they impact the moon.”

  “Confirmed, sir. Kashai out.”

  Dukat found the station for the marauder’s commander and sat on the broad, cushioned disk. A cluster of circular screens and abstractly proportioned panels hung around him, suspended on the ends of metal armatures that rose from the floor or dangled from the ceiling. He toyed with them, turning and adjusting so he could sit in relative comfort and examine them. One screen showed a view beyond the blunt prow of the marauder, through the vapor of discharged breathing gases and wreckage fragments that were the remains of the skirmish between the Tzenkethi and the Bajorans. One of the assault ships was drifting past on a slow tumble, the nose turning, presenting itself to the dal.

  Dukat considered the crews aboard those ships. Unlike the Tzenkethi, who were declared enemies of the Cardassian Union, the Bajorans were, under the letter of the Detapa Council’s law, an allied people—and yet he had ordered the murder of more than a hundred of them without a moment’s hesitation. And now, as a plan of his design gathered momentum, Skrain Dukat’s hand lay on the weapon that would cause the deaths of countless more Bajorans.

  As his men worked quietly around him, he looked inward, searching for the moral balance that guided so much of his actions.

  The morality of a Cardassian can only be understood by a Cardassian. The morality of a soldier of the Union is that which serves the Union best. His father had first said those words to him, repeating one of the great axioms of service. There had been moments in his life when Dukat had entertained doubts—and only a simpleton would be so foolish as to believe that no man could be without questions, soldier or not—but this was not one of them. Dukat considered the place where he found himself: isolated from Central Command because of the independent streak he had exhibited during the Talarian
conflict…No matter that it had won him many battles! Reviled by Kell for daring to defy the jagul, for shining a light on the corpulent fool’s lack of progress with the Bajorans, and in an uneasy partnership with Ico and the Obsidian Order. More than anything, it was the latter that sat most poorly with him. The Obsidian Order represented everything that was cancerous about Cardassia; they were an institutionalized form of decay that preyed on the military and the people even as they pretended to serve the same ends as Central Command.

  His gloved hands tightened into fists. The Order serves only the Order. That too was wisdom that his father had given him, and firsthand Skrain had learned the truth of it. It galled him to think that he was in partnership with them on this, but he was a pragmatist and he saw that no other choice was open to him. Ico and her kind may be a cancer on Cardassia, but there are other more pressing malignancies that must be excised first. The pitiable Oralians, with their sad weakness and their primitive beliefs. The recalcitrant Bajorans, refusing to come to heel like ill-trained riding hounds.

  Warfare is always a matter of priorities. Another axiom from his training came to mind. The priority today is not my loathing of Ico’s nest of vipers, but to secure a future for Cardassia. For my people and my family.

  “Sir,” said the glinn, interrupting his musings. “Plasma cannon is now operable.”