by David Stern
“Nothing from the captain?”
“No, sir. Or the Orion ship.”
She glanced over at Spock. “Is it possible the Klingons are jamming the signal?”
“It is possible. We are at the limit of effective sensor range.”
“Move us closer, Mr. Tyler. Right up to the line. Do not cross into the Borderland.”
“The line’s pretty fuzzy there,” Enterprise ’s helmsman said.
“Stretch it as close as you can. Mr. Garrison. See if you can raise either of those Klingon vessels.”
“Been trying. No response.”
“Energy burst,” Spock announced. “Weapons fire from one of the Klingon vessels, directed toward Karkon’s Wing. ”
“Commander,” Hardin said. “All due respect, we can’t just—”
“Lieutenant, I need facts now, not opinions. When I want the latter, I will ask for them. Any damage to the Orion vessel, Mr. Spock?” Number One turned in the command chair.
“Calculating now,” Spock said. “One moment.”
Data flew across one corner of the screen; as Spock processed them, he heard the turbolift door open. He glanced up and saw Pitcairn stride onto the bridge, muttering to himself as he came.
“… it was them all along, but does anyone listen to me, no one listens to me …”
“Mr. Spock?” Number One prompted.
“Minute directional variation in the Orion ship’s course. Possibly due to impact, possibly intentional evasive maneuver.”
“Rerouting power outlays,” Chief Pitcairn said. “Prioritizing weapons and defense systems.”
“Ships are continuing to move deeper into the Borderland,” Spock said.
Number One abruptly rose from the command chair and strode toward the front of the bridge, toward the main viewscreen. Thinking. Spock did not envy her position. The landing party, including the captain and two of the ship’s senior officers, were trapped aboard an alien vessel, itself now the target of hostilities. All communications lost, Karkon’s Wing was heading deeper into the Borderland, territory forbidden Enterprise by terms of Gorengar.
The commander spun around. “Hexar,” she said, looking at Garrison. “Get me Hexar. Right now.”
“The ship is not registering on our sensors at the moment.”
“I am aware of that, Lieutenant. I gave you an order. Hail Hexar, ” she snapped. “Send this message. We are entering the Borderland in response to an attack on our shuttlecraft. Stand by for further information.”
“Aye, sir.”
Spock frowned. He understood the rationale behind the transmission. Number One was providing diplomatic cover for their actions, a defense for their violation of Gorengar. Diplomatic of her, too, not to directly accuse the Klingons of being responsible for that attack.
Although it was likely that none of those subtleties would matter in the end. Crossing into the Borderland was tantamount to an act of war.
“If we wait for acknowledgment of the transmission,” he began, speaking quietly, “that would provide an additional legal basis for—”
“We can’t wait,” Number One said. “Not a second longer.” She sat back down in the command chair. “Ahead sublight, Mr. Tyler,” she said. “Let’s go get our people.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and Enterprise shot forward, across the Borderland.
The sound of weapons fire from above abruptly ceased. Pike heard a sharp intake of breath from Ross, huddled at his back. He refused to allow himself to react emotionally. Emotion would get him nowhere. Emotion wouldn’t change the facts.
Tuval had stopped firing, Tuval was dead.
His job now was to make sure Ben hadn’t sacrificed himself in vain.
The captain peered around the edge of the doorframe. Six guards, fifty feet in front of him, guarding the entryway to Magellan. Facing the wrong direction—Ben’s parting gift to him. The commander had gambled that there would be a second access to the deck they’d come in on, not far from the one they’d originally used. He’d offered to stay behind while the captain and Ross went on ahead.
“I’ll hold them here,” Tuval had said.
Pike had shaken his head. “We stay together.”
“Then we die.”
“He’s right, Captain.” Ross had stepped forward. “It should be me who stays. You two are more important.”
“The hell with that.” Tuval had glared at her. “Standard emergency protocol. Security commander gives the orders, and my orders are go. Now. While you can.”
Pike had heard footsteps down the hall, heading in their direction. Fast.
He had looked at Ben. “Good luck,” he’d said.
Which meant good-bye.
“Same to you.” Tuval had turned away.
And he and Ross had run. And here they were. Ben was dead, and it was only now, as the captain replayed that scene in his mind, that he realized the entire time they’d been running, from the second they left the wreckage of the reception room behind, Ben had been laboring for breath. Trying to get oxygen into his lungs. Trying, and failing, just as Boyce had warned. That was why he’d stopped at the ladder. It had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the fact that Pike had decided to play God with his officer’s life, commit his officer to a mission the man wasn’t physically capable of carrying out, and now his officer—
“Captain, why are they doing this, sir?
Ross’s whispered voice brought him back to the here and now.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Ensign.”
He had no idea what Liyan hoped to gain from all of this. Starfleet would hunt her down no matter where she went. Whatever it was she was after, she wouldn’t be around long enough to enjoy it.
Unfortunately, the odds were pretty good at the moment that he wouldn’t, either.
Pike considered the situation. They had, for the moment, the element of surprise. What else? Not much. The phaser in his hand, down to about thirty percent power. Ross’s phaser, which was probably running even lower. And their communicators still weren’t functional. Not a lot to work with. But it would have to do.
A buzzer sounded. Pike peered around the corner again, saw one of the Orions lower his weapon and walk toward the far wall, toward what looked like a comm panel.
Time to go, Pike thought, eyeing the hatchway to Magellan.
He turned his head slightly and whispered to Ross. “Stay behind me. Stay low. Phaser on lowest stun setting. Fire only when you have a clear target. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
“Good.” The Orion was at the comm panel, talking. Frowning. Probably getting the news that Pike and Ross were not where they were supposed to be. The other guards hadn’t exactly lowered their weapons, but they had relaxed somewhat. Changed their stances, loosened their grips …
Pike fired over their heads, a short, high-power burst directed at the thickest of the pipes dangling from the deck plating overhead. The conduit sheared in half and crashed to the floor. Wires sparked; the Orions jumped back, heads whipping around in confusion.
Pike flipped settings on his weapon, chose a target, and fired. The nearest guard crumpled.
One down.
The captain was moving even as the guard fell, diving forward, rolling, just underneath a volley of weapons fire—phased energy beams, at lethal settings. He could literally feel the heat coming off them as he got to his feet again and fired a second time.
Two down.
“They are here!” the Orion at the comm panel screamed. “Reinforcements! They are here, at the shuttle—”
A phaser blast caught him square in the gut; he flew backward through the air and slammed into the wall. Ross’s work—good shooting.
Three down.
Pike raised his own weapon again, and fired.
Four.
The phaser flew from his grip. He looked down and saw that his hand was burning. There was smoke rising from his palm. The skin there was black.
“Captain!”
/>
He turned in time to see Ross take a step out into the middle of the corridor.
He was about to say, “Stay low,” and then a beam caught her full on, and she froze, an expression of shock on her face.
She vanished.
Pike lunged for the weapon he’d dropped, grabbed it up with his left hand, ignoring the agony from his right. He could feel the dead, charred skin cracking, oozing; it was pain like he hadn’t felt in a good long time, since Gorengar. The captain focused, as best he could, on the weapon in his left hand, which he didn’t try to fire. He just threw it, right at one of the two remaining guards, the closer one, who was maybe four meters away. The Orion flinched and pulled his head back even as he was pulling the trigger on his own weapon. The movement made him miss; the energy beam flew over Pike’s shoulder. The captain charged straight at the man, staying as close to the wall as he could, positioning himself so that the other guard, six meters away, couldn’t fire without hitting his own man.
He tried anyway. The beam struck the near guard in the shoulder. He screamed.
Pike reached him, shoved him aside, and opened the access door to Magellan.
He burst into the airlock, turning as he entered and sealing the door behind him.
A second later, it began to glow red. The Orion was firing on it with his weapon. Pike gambled that the door would hold long enough for him to launch. He had no alternative.
He punched the inner hatch control, entered the ship proper, and fired up the propulsion systems. No time to do a systems check; no time to set a course; just go.
He sat, cradling his right hand to his chest, and activated impulse thrusters, at the last second remembering to hit the emergency airlock jettison. He heard the sound of metal tearing, and then the shuttle was away, space in the viewport in front of him.
“ Magellan to Enteprise. Magellan to Enterprise . It was a trap, the—”
The console squawked. Failure to transmit. The signal, he saw, was being jammed. Wouldn’t matter; once he was a little farther out, Enterprise would pick him up on its sensors, and—
Something made him turn, then there was movement at the edge of his field of vision.
He looked behind and to his left, where Karkon’s Wing, a postage-stamp-sized square of silver against the black of space, was visible.
There was something else there, too, a glinting pinprick of light that suddenly grew to the size of a small moon. And then a much larger one. It was silver as well. Metal. A weapon of some sort, a torpedo—
There was a sudden burst of light, and then he slammed forward into the console. The horrific sound of metal tearing, flames, heat, and then cold.
Nothing but cold, and the vast, empty blackness of space.
They were ten seconds across the demarcation line, ten seconds into the Borderland, neutral territory at best, Klingon space as a worst-case scenario, when Hexar reappeared. Accompanied by half a dozen other Klingon vessels—four warbirds and two heavy cruisers. All had emerged from Adelson at virtually the same instant.
“Enterprise.” K’Zon glared down at them from the main viewscreen. “You are now, by your own admission, in violation of Gorengar treaty. Stand down, and prepare to be boarded.”
“Our captain is aboard the Orion ship Karkon’s Wing, which is currently under attack,” Number One said. “We are in the midst of a rescue mission. I am transmitting copies of relevant communications and sensor readings to you now.”
She turned toward Spock, who had already, at her command, prepared the data—the last few minutes of readings from the long-range sensors. He shunted it over to Lieutenant Garrison, who attached the relevant communications entries, encoded the entire package, and sent it on in a data burst.
A moment later, on the viewscreen, a Klingon functionary approached K’Zon and whispered something in his ear.
The general’s eyes widened. He stood up and shook a finger at the viewscreen and, by extension, Enterprise ’s first officer.
“You accuse us of breaking the treaty?” K’Zon’s fury was evident. “Of launching this cowardly attack?”
“I have presented you with a set of data,” Number One said. “An explanation for which I would be very interested in—”
“Do you know who I am?” K’Zon spluttered. “You speak to the general who won Narendra for the Empire, who fought back the Dourami, who received the chancellor’s own thanks a dozen times over, who—”
“Perhaps,” Spock suggested. “These ships now attacking the Orion vessel are privateers. Not of the Empire.”
“You are mistaken, Vulcan,” K’Zon said, his expression softening not one single iota. “No Klingon would fight in this manner.”
“I would not have thought so, either,” Number One said. “And yet you work to develop a cloaking device that would enable your ships to engage in just such actions.”
K’Zon’s eyes widened for a second in surprise. Then his expression—Spock wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible—grew even fiercer.
“Now you call me a liar,” the general said. “The time for talk is well and truly finished.”
The viewscreen went dark. The sector map reappeared.
“Here they come,” Chief Pitcairn said.
“Indeed,” Spock said. The Klingon armada. “On intercept course. At current speed and position, we have roughly forty seconds till they are in firing range.”
All eyes turned to Number One, who sat motionless in the command chair, studying the viewscreen.
“Chief,” she said, “how long till we’re in transporter range of the Orion ship?”
Pitcairn shook his head. “Longer than forty seconds.”
“How long exactly? A minute? Two? Because if we can hold them off—”
“Commander,” Garrison interrupted. “Incoming transmission. From the Orions.”
The lieutenant didn’t wait for Number One’s command; he put the transmission right up on the viewscreen.
It was Liyan. She was someplace other than the bridge, standing in what appeared to Spock to be a banquet room of some kind, but the ceiling had collapsed, at least partially. The air was filled with dust. He glimpsed bodies on the screen behind her.
One of them wore a Starfleet uniform.
“Enterprise.” Liyan brushed back hair from her face and coughed. “ Enterprise, are you there?”
“Right here,” Number One said. “Go ahead.”
“I have news,” Liyan said, and coughed again. “Tragic news.”
The transmission finished—and well executed it had been; she was particularly pleased not just with her performance but with the fact that they had turned the human captain’s own destructiveness against him, using the damage he’d caused in the banquet hall as backdrop for the announcement of his death—Liyan returned to the bridge of Karkon’s Wing, well satisfied with the day’s work.
“Status,” she demanded, taking a seat in her chair.
“Projector returned to Bay One,” her tactical officer declared.
“And the Federation shuttle?”
“The wreckage is there as well.”
She nodded. Good to have something tangible to return to the Federation; they would deliver the shuttlecraft to Enterprise, accompanied by the bodies they had in their possession. Perhaps the story would need to change slightly—perhaps Pike and his crew had been shot down in the act of escaping by the Klingon ship. Of course, an appropriate number of Orion casualties would need to be manufactured as well. A dozen? Perhaps that number was too low. Two dozen? Three? She would consult her engineers. They would run simulations, come up with a believable figure. The exact number did not matter. The point was, the Federation and the Empire would be at each other’s throat shortly. No matter that for now, Enterprise had retreated back across the border. Soon enough, the two empires would be plunged into battle, all-out war that would preoccupy them for some time to come. A war that would give her the window she needed to operate freely within the Borderland, to bring the other ra
ces within its confines to heel, to consolidate power among her own people. To restore the glory of that era, long forgotten, when the Orions were the feared power within this quadrant.
And she—tallith of all clans, rightful descendant and heir to K’rgon’s throne—would lead them.
Pride swelled within her; strength coursed through her body. She felt the blood rush through her veins.
She glanced down at her arms and saw the slight darkening of those veins, emerald green against the lime of her skin.
And she was reminded again that all of her plans—everything—depended on Enterprise ’s doctor living up to his reputation. Speaking of which …
“I will be in the medical wing. You will alert me when we are prepared to return the wreckage,” she said, standing. “Otherwise, I do not wish to be disturbed.”
The officer lowered his head. “Of course, Tallith.”
She was halfway to the exit when something occurred to her. “Tactician. A further exception.”
“Yes, Tallith.”
“If the Klingons and Federation ships begin firing on each other …”
“Yes?”
“That I would like to see.”
“Of course, Tallith.”
They shared a smile, and she left the control room.
BOOK II
DESCENT
EIGHT
Three days after the shuttle’s loss—two days after Excalibur and Hood had come out of warp, twenty-six hours after Captain Vlasidovich had, at Admiral Noguchi’s direction, taken command of both Enterprise and the nascent UFP fleet now assembling in orbit around 55-Hamilton—Spock was summoned to the briefing room.
He found the new captain and Number One waiting for him. Vlasidovich—a short, stocky man, with a thick head of black, bushy hair, prematurely streaked with gray—sat at the head of the table, a stack of flimsies at his right hand, Number One leaning over his right shoulder.
“Come, come.” Vlasidovich spoke without looking up. “I am just reviewing files, Mr. Spock. One moment.”
“Of course, sir.” Spock clasped his hands behind his back and stood at the far end of the table. Flimsies. Spock had heard of Vlasidovich’s preference for studying hard copy whenever possible; he found it puzzling, inefficient.
