“That’s one way of thinking of it, yes,” Syjin replied. His fingers danced over the helm controls as disruptor blasts arced past them. “But less dangerous than a Galor-class starship.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Syjin shrugged. “Not really.”
They plunged into the belt at maximum speed, with the Vandir close behind. The cruiser was surprisingly nimble, vectoring hard to dodge around pockets of rippling gaseous energy that Syjin avoided with ease. Darrah kept silent, watching his friend do what he did best—fly by pure instinct. Syjin’s face was oddly placid, except for the occasional smile. He was actually enjoying this; without the fetters of gravity and atmosphere, ship and pilot moved in perfect step, dancing rather than flying.
Behind them, Vandir came on, the deflectors of Dukat’s warship flaring as it forced its way through clusters of energized neutrinos that would have sent the smaller Bajoran ship tumbling.
“He’s still on us,” Darrah said as the shuddering, spinning turns became more forceful. His throat was dry.
“I know,” Syjin replied calmly. “Careful, now. This is going to get rough.” He smiled. “Well, rougher.”
They took a hit, and then another. A panel behind them crashed and broke apart. Over their heads, a conduit ruptured and a puff of hot gas emerged, spitting and dying away as automatic sealants activated. They were rolling and bouncing, up and down, back and forth. It was all Darrah could do to cling to the restraints of his chair. “This isn’t like before,” he managed, between gritted teeth. “This is worse.”
“Just hold on,” Syjin told him.
Gul Dukat appeared to have other ideas; the disruptor barrage was finding their range, zeroing in.
“I’m looking for something,” continued the pilot.
“What, the Celestial Temple?” As boys, Prylar Yilb had taught them that the belt, visible from Bajor with the naked eye during the solstice, was fabled in myth as the place where the Prophets made their home. Darrah had never really believed that, not in a literal manner, but suddenly he was wondering. Were his gods going to reach out and smite the Cardassian ship snapping at their heels?
Syjin read his mind. “The Prophets help those who help themselves.” He grinned as a telltale flashed on his console. The pilot turned the ship and aimed it like an arrow. “My father was a pilot, my grandfather, and his before him…And the tricks get lost sometimes, but other times they get passed on.” A rumble echoed through the ship, and a sudden acceleration took them. “Hold on,” Syjin called, straining to say the words. “I found us a boost!”
With a blink of energy discharge, the Bajoran ship skipped out of the Denorios Belt, cast like a stone thrown out over a lake. The Vandir was still chasing them, but it fell behind, slipping off the close-range proximity scope.
Eventually the speed bled away and the velocity-distorted stars became more regular as they settled into normal warp flight. Darrah gingerly got out of his chair. “What was that, the hand of god?”
“You could call it that,” Syjin said, wiping a film of sweat from his brow. “Actually, that was a tachyon eddy. The old Republic solar sailors used to use them to propel themselves to other star systems, back before we had light-speed drives.” He mimed a sail with the blade of his hand.
“Like a coastal wind pushing a yacht.”
“I thought that was a spacer myth,” Darrah replied. “A bar-stool story for the elderly crocks who can’t see to fly anymore.”
Syjin shot him a grin. “Now you know different. In the old eras, they used to make a sacrament to the Prophets before they crossed the belt, so maybe you were right. About the ‘hand of god’ thing.”
Something caught Darrah’s eye and he bent to examine the engineering panel. “I don’t think so. Not unless they want to call us back to the Celestial Temple pretty soon.”
“What’s wrong?” Syjin vaulted out of his seat.
There, on the console, the system status display showed a rupture running the entire length of the ship’s port drive nacelle. “We’re bleeding plasma.” Darrah frowned. “Must be from one of those disruptor hits.”
Syjin grimaced. “Speed’s dropping. We’ll be bounced out of warp and stuck on impulse, light-years from anywhere,” he spat. “It’ll take years on sublight to reach the nearest planet! We’ll starve first!”
Darrah shook his head and tapped the long-range sensor display. “No, we won’t.” The Vandir was still following them. “Dukat’s going to solve that problem for us.”
“Give me that again,” said Jameson, turning in his chair to look across the bridge at Ensign Muhle.
The Gettysburg’s Tiburonian communications officer nodded, one hand pressing a transceiver to his large ear. “Confirming, sir. Signal prefix identified as mission code for Lieutenant Alynna Nechayev.”
The captain glanced at the woman in question. “You have an explanation, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, aware that all eyes on the bridge were on her. “Before we escaped Bajor, I managed to…cultivate a new intelligence asset. The man who aided our flight, a local law enforcement officer named Darrah Mace.”
“You coerced a Bajoran into becoming a Federation operative without consulting your operational commander?” T’Vel said coldly. “A very risky action.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she replied curtly. “I thought he might have access to information that could be useful.” Nechayev sighed. “That was before we decided to abandon Bajor to the Cardassians, of course.”
Jameson frowned at the comment. “Gold,” he called, nodding to the other officer. “Passive sensors, please. What do we have at the coordinates the signal originated from?”
“Working,” said the lieutenant. “Here we go. One Bajoran ship at impulse, fluctuating power levels. Can’t get a life sign reading at this range.”
“Anything else?”
Gold widened the search area. “Oh boy. That’s a yes, Captain. Another contact, reads as a Cardassian cruiser. He’s coming at them like he’s hungry.”
“Position?”
“Close to the Federation border,” Gold replied.
T’Vel raised an eyebrow. “But not close enough for a sanctioned intervention.”
Nechayev rounded on the Vulcan. “That’s a distress call, Commander! Sent specifically to this ship!” To me, she added silently. “Are you suggesting we ignore it?”
“I am suggesting nothing,” said the woman, unruffled by the lieutenant’s words. “In this matter, any involvement is wholly at the discretion of the ship’s captain.”
Jameson sat quietly in his chair, his hands knitted before him, staring at the stars on the viewscreen.
The Vandir arrived and brought hell with it. Bright spears of glowing energy reached out to pierce the ship, and the vessel was bathed in a crackling glow.
Inside, Darrah and Syjin were thrown about as the shields fluttered. “You have any weapons on this thing?” demanded the lawman.
“A laser cluster on the nose, if it still works,” Syjin replied, clinging to his console. “That’d only irritate them, I think.”
“We have to stay out off their disruptor arc.” Darrah did his best to help at the copilot’s station. “Keep agile.”
“Easier said than done.” Another blast slammed into them, and sparking electrical shorts crawled across the deck plates. “We’re losing deflectors. He gets a direct hit on us and we’re not even going to have time to feel it.”
“Aft shields at twenty percent.” Darrah worked the console. “I’m transferring power from the forward array.”
Gravity had been the first thing to go, and the inside of the cockpit was a mess of floating dust, pieces of stale food, and sundry other bits of debris. Syjin threw himself out of his seat and pivoted to land neatly at the engineering station. “Hold it together, Mace, just for a moment.” The ship hummed as another bolt kissed the dorsal shields. “Bah. No call for surrender? This Dukat’s got no class at all.”
“No argument there,” Darrah grated, pulling the ship this way and that. He lacked the skill of his friend, but the threat of imminent death made any man a fast learner. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that the Vandir was toying with them, bracketing the Bajoran ship with beam-fire, herding them into a kill zone.
“Still,” Syjin said, a laugh in his voice. “This is exciting, isn’t it?” The pilot worked frantically to divert precious energy from non-critical systems to the shields.
“What?” Darrah couldn’t believe his ears.
“We used to play space battles as kids, didn’t we? You and me and Osen, behind that big old kava tree outside the docker dormitories—”
The next bolt that hit them punched through the weakening shields like they were vapor. The disruptor beam sheared off the starboard nacelle entirely and released superheated plasma back into the ship, letting it unfold in a wild, uncontrolled reaction. Seeking the path of least resistance, it cracked up through the hull and touched a power conduit. Systems all over the ship exploded like bombs, including the engineering console. The detonation overpressure punctured Darrah’s eardrums, and in horrifying silence he saw Syjin pinwheel around the cabin to collide with the far bulkhead. The pilot was blown across the room, a ragged doll trailing streamers of blood that coiled away in zero gravity.
He forgot the controls and screamed his friend’s name, floundering after him through the acrid and choking air. Syjin kept drifting away from him, still turning gently, as if he didn’t want Darrah to see his ruined face.
Lights were going out all around him, and suddenly the air felt thick and greasy, hard to push down into his lungs. Darrah kept reaching for his friend, fingers sweeping and missing at the cuff of his blood-soaked jacket. Behind him, a black pack drifted across the cockpit, the mass of the object inside carrying it on an aimless course.
“Confirm motion-kill,” noted Orloc. “Target has lost power. Life support has failed.” He looked up at Dukat. “I can send men aboard, sir, or bring it into the bay.”
“New contact,” said Tunol. “Dropping from warp, closing on intercept vector.”
Dukat shot her an angry look; he was a breath away from giving the final order to fire. “Identify it,” he scowled.
“Federation,” she said, with a lilt of surprise. “A light cruiser.”
“They’re hailing us,” reported a glinn. “Shall I respond?”
“Of course not,” Dukat snapped. “They’ve got no jurisdiction here, no matter how close to their borders they say we are. Starfleet can watch me dispatch this annoyance and then complain to our backs as we return to Bajor.”
“They might attack,” warned Orloc.
“That ship’s not a match for us,” Dukat began, but a look from Tunol brought him up short. “What?” he hissed.
“Three more vessels of the same class approaching. They must have been hiding in the warp signature of the one we detected.” She licked her lips. “Gul, we can’t oppose four—”
“Come about!” he snarled, silencing her, angry that he would be denied the chance to defy Starfleet to its face.
“Orloc! Load a seeker munition into the aft tube and program the Bajoran’s silhouette into the warhead. Fire when ready.”
“Coming about,” Tunol reported. “Course?”
“Bajor.” Dukat spat the word back at her. “Maximum warp. We are done with this fool’s errand.”
From behind him, Orloc called out. “Seeker away and running.”
“They’re taking the bluff,” said Nechayev. “The Cardassians are moving off.”
“Good,” replied Jameson. “If he didn’t, we’d be stuck here going head to head with nothing but sensor phantoms for backup.” It had been the captain’s idea to manipulate Gettysburg’s warp signature to produce a series of echoes; to a cursory scanner sweep, they would seem like a flotilla of identical starships.
“The Bajoran ship’s coming apart at the seams,” reported Gold. “Scanning. I’m reading one life-form on board.”
“The Cardassian ship has ignored all hails—” Muhle started to speak, but T’Vel’s strident tones broke over him.
“Cardassian is firing.” She was clipped and firm. “Seeker missile.”
Jameson shot Nechayev a hard look. They were running at Red Alert status, ready to meet any attack with equal force; the Gettysburg’s crew had crossed swords with the Cardassian Union on more than one occasion. “Are we the target?”
“Negative!” replied Gold. “He’s going to warp, and the seeker’s homing straight in on the Bajoran!”
“Captain,” Nechayev pressed. “We have to get that man out of there.”
He didn’t respond to her. “Lieutenant Gold, are you certain? Are we the seeker’s target?”
“No, sir,” said the officer. “It’s entering terminal phase now, ten seconds to impact. Nine. Eight—”
Jameson nodded to T’Vel, and the Vulcan gave the order. “Lower the shields. Transporter room?”
“Ready, Commander.” Nechayev heard Gwen Jones’s voice on the other end of the intercom.
“Lock on and energize.”
By rights, Jones should have still been in sickbay, but she was going stir-crazy in the starship’s medical center and when the alert condition sounded, she took the opportunity to assist the Gettysburg’s crew at their stations; and besides, it would help if the first face Darrah saw was a familiar one.
Across from her in the transporter room, Lieutenant Commander sh’Sena and a Bolian ensign named Jolev were poised with their phasers drawn, with Nurse Tepper standing nearby with a medical kit. The Andorian, it seemed, was willing to take no chances.
“Transporter room?” T’Vel’s crisp tones cracked over the intercom.
“Ready, Commander.” The technician at the console gave her a thumbs-up sign.
“Lock on and energize.”
“Energizing,” reported the operator, shifting the slider pads on the panel. A human shape accreted in the blue-white halo of the transporter effect, and Jones stifled a gasp as Darrah Mace’s face came into being. His expression was one of pain and shock.
The beaming process concluded, and Darrah collapsed to the floor. Jones rushed to his side, with Tepper at her heels. The nurse popped a hypospray at the Bajoran’s neck, waving a medical tricorder at him.
A strong odor of burnt plastic radiated from the man, and he coughed harshly. He blinked and focused on Jones, gulping down air. “You?” Blood leaked in thin trails from both his ears.
“It’s me,” she confirmed.
He pushed Tepper away, trying to get to his feet, wobbling where he stood. “The pack…” He croaked. “Where’s the pack?”
“I don’t understand,” said Jones, reaching for him.
He didn’t seem to hear a word she was saying. “All in the core,” he muttered, losing his balance. “The core. In the ship. Syjin…”
“The ship’s been destroyed,” said the technician. “We barely yanked him out in time.”
“No,” Darrah gurgled, coughing up thin bile. “Prophets, no! They all died…They all died for it…” He clutched at Jones’s sleeve, flailing. The Bajoran tried to say something else, but his words became a hollow gasp and he buckled.
Tepper snapped her tricorder closed. “He’s badly injured. Beam us directly to sickbay.”
Jones watched the man shimmer and vanish. On her hands where she had touched him there was soot and dark, arterial blood.
Eventually, when the muscles in his legs became rigid with cramp and his lungs felt like they were flooded with acid, Bennek stopped running. He hid in the alleyways, burying himself among the wreckage and the abandoned debris of a city that was tearing itself to pieces.
The fear inside him was a kind of terror he had never encountered before. It was a certainty, a complete and utter awareness of one fact: the entire metropolis was geared to destroy him. Every living being he saw, every figure he encountered, all of them wanted Bennek dead.
&nb
sp; The Bajorans, running and shouting, some praying and others fighting among themselves for food, for a vehicle, for old hurts given freedom by the anarchy; the Militia, who moved not as policemen did on Cardassia, with boldness inspired from fear of their badges, but skulking in the shadows as Bennek did, afraid for their lives; and the Cardassians, insect-sharp in their black armor, stalking the streets with copper rifles in their grip and armed skimmers preceding them.
Speakers on the skimmers and the few streetscreens that still worked were broadcasting the same loop of careful speech, a string of platitudes recorded by Lale Usbor calling for calm across the planet and assuring the people that their Cardassian friends were here to help restore peace.
On occasions, as he moved from building to building through the rainy morning, Bennek saw Union soldiers panning tricorders around the streets, the devices bringing them through masses of displaced citizens to groups of swaddled figures hiding in disguise. Oralians. Without ceremony or comment, the troopers took Bennek’s brethren out of sight of the Bajorans and phasered them down, using high-energy blasts to disintegrate the bodies. They didn’t offer them the chance to recant.
The first time, he wept, clutching the leather bag to his chest and rocking in the wet darkness. The second time he just watched, and the time after that, and the time after that.
It took all day to reach the hill district on foot, and then an hour or two more before he was at the ornamental gardens and through to the Naghai Keep. Bennek didn’t pause to wonder where the Militia guards had gone; he could hear the humming of skimmers following him up the hill. The sound pressed him on, buoying his aching legs as a swimmer would move on a wave crest. Into the keep, and the corridors beyond. Searching. Searching.
Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers Page 45
