Star Trek: Titan: Absent Enemies

by Miller, John Jackson

  With a flick of the wrist, Zorrayn whisked an object toward the Vulcan’s throat. Tuvok lanced out with his arm, grabbing the projectile from the air.

  “A personal access data device. A padd.”

  “Genius!” Zorrayn snorted.

  “This is Federation issue,” Tuvok said, looking at it. “An older model.” A couple of touches provided more information. “It belonged to Enterprise’s supply stores.”

  “Basic information!” Zorrayn shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to figure it out!”

  “On the contrary,” Tuvok said. “You stole this padd from one of that starship’s engineers while he was doing his maintenance work on your atmospheric units.”

  Zorrayn pursed his lips and said nothing.

  “I choose not to read his personal data further—but I suspect this contains the first draft of On the Nature of Chronitonically Phased Matter by one Geordi La Forge.” Tuvok stared directly at Zorrayn. “You knew of his experience, and his thoughts about it, long before they were published.”

  “You’re not as stupid as the other Federation-men.”

  “I do not accept your premise, so I cannot accept your praise.” He surreptitiously slipped the padd into the pocket of his uniform. “If there is nothing further, it is time that I returned to my crew.”

  Zorrayn laughed loudly—and yet, his voice did not echo at all in the big room, for it had no ceiling in this state of reality. “That’s rich. Richly so, I might say! What makes you think you can go back?”

  “You would have learned from Mister La Forge’s writings that bombardment by anyonic particles has the effect of eliminating chroniton fields. And you must have people returning to the normal world now and again as you require more supplies.”

  Zorrayn stopped smiling.

  “Don’t lie. It is obvious you have the capacity,” Tuvok said. He pointed to Orica. “I suspect every Ekorr has the capability, built into these armlets you have. You will supply me with one.”

  “I can’t let you go back!” The Ekorr leader seemed on the verge of a tantrum. “You’ll give us away!”

  “Then I will effect my return myself.” Tuvok turned and began walking past the giant anvil. Perhaps in the Ekorr’s pseudo-supply room, he could find another—

  “No, no, no!” Zorrayn’s wrinkled face was afire with anger. He pressed a control on his own gauntlet. “This Federation-man’s audience is over. You can come out now!”

  Tuvok sensed movement behind him. Armed members of Zorrayn’s vanguard stepped through walls all around the atrium.

  “I’ll send you back, Vulcan—only after you’re dead. I don’t want our clean little realm littered with corpses while we’re here!” Zorrayn pointed. “Take him!”

  Ten

  * * *

  Phaser combat, Tuvok understood well. Phased combat was something completely new. But while no training could have prepared him for the encounter he was in, he figured his survival depended on one thing: his ability to remember where he was and what the rules were.

  When the Ekorr advanced toward him, he was far from any immaterial wall to dash through. But he had remembered that there was something physical right behind him: the gargantuan anvil, which in this state of reality shrouded a small mountain of cargo containers. He leapt toward it—and as he did so, he was enveloped by darkness. The anvil’s form extended out slightly beyond the pile in several places; and while Tuvok could not see, neither could those outside its boundaries see him.

  Seeking handholds and footholds, he began to climb, hoping the containers would support him. They did—surprisingly so, for presumed empties. Behind him, he heard loud footsteps and hand disruptors powering up.

  But Zorrayn called out first: “Don’t shoot, you fools! You could hit it by mistake!”

  It had worked even better than he had imagined, Tuvok thought: Zorrayn has mistaken the junk pile for his holy relic! Realizing the Ekorr would figure that out after a second, he kept climbing higher. He’d worried that the stack was hollow inside, and that his efforts might cave the whole thing in—but the pile seemed solid.

  Reaching the top of the immense pile of containers, Tuvok popped his head through the edge of darkness—the upper reach of the anvil in the real world—and peeked back down. The Ekorr were feeling around at the perimeter of the massive shape, trying to grab hold of any object in the dark.

  “There he is!” Zorrayn yelled. But Tuvok’s face sank back into the shared space of the anvil, and he began to move again. Having determined the side with the fewest Ekorr, he sprang, leaping from the occulted pile and landing squarely on the shoulders of one of the unsuspecting guards. He floored the Ekorr victim, whose disruptor went tumbling away. Tuvok’s kick took out a second guard, but before he could grab the female’s weapon, he saw a third gathering speed for an assault. The Vulcan sidestepped the attack and gave a firm chop to the assailant’s shoulder. Grabbing at the Ekorr, he lifted the short creature and hurled him into the anvil.

  Ker-rash! One side of the pile of boxes, already made precarious by Tuvok’s climb, came smashing down. Behind, Tuvok heard Zorrayn shriek. “Not the altar! Not the altar!”

  Tuvok used the distraction to look for the first guard’s disruptor. It had fallen near the base of a large four-sided pedestal, located against the northern wall of the rotunda. A bust of Surak had once stood atop it; the Ekorr had removed the statue but not the massive pedestal, etched with the sayings of the father of logic. Tuvok dove for it—only to see a booted foot emerge from the plinth, pinning the weapon underneath.

  “Two can play this game,” said the voice of a female Ekorr. The rest of Orica’s phased form emerged from the cover of the big support, her weapon raised. “I don’t want to hurt you, Vulcan. You’re amusing. But Zorrayn commands that—”

  Before she could finish, Tuvok grabbed her thigh with one hand and pushed her torso with the other, causing the woman to tumble backward into the pedestal again. Phaser blasts from the other Ekorr sounded from behind, lancing through the nothingness around him. Quickly grabbing the fallen disruptor, he dove forward into the pedestal himself.

  Orica was still “inside” the object, trying to get to her feet. Tuvok barreled into her. More than twice her weight, he easily pushed her through the back of the plinth—and he kept going, his driving run carrying both of them through the wall behind.

  Tuvok separated himself from her and looked around. It was another part of the former Vulcan lyceum, but it was no sanctuary—as both found out when disruptor fire erupted from the wall through which they’d passed.

  “Brothers and sisters—I’m in here!” Orica yelled, raising her weapon. “I can arrest him! Don’t shoot!”

  “Run!” Tuvok said as another pair of bolts went past. Realizing the futility of calling out, she followed him on a dash through one wall and then the next.

  * * *

  “All right, I’ve heard enough,” Riker said as he listened to Vale’s surprising report. “Stand by, Titan.”

  He tapped the combadge twice and looked back at his wife. “Can you believe it? This whole island is rife with chroniton fields. Titan’s sensors couldn’t read them from orbit, but once Xin’s people down here knew to look, they found them everywhere. They didn’t even have to look far. They were particularly heavy where the engineers were doing their work—and just about everywhere else.”

  Troi brightened. “Then it’s just like what happened to Ro and La Forge after all. That means Tuvok is all right!”

  “If we can find him to get him back.” Riker scowled. “I’m more concerned about how this happened.” His mind had been racing since he first considered the possibility. Now it stopped on the same answer: The Breen had interfered, somehow introducing interphase technology into the local conflict.

  Phase technology! It had haunted him since Pegasus, when he saw to what lengths a career officer wou
ld go in order to militarize it. He’d also seen how dangerous it was, and what it had ultimately done to that starship. He’d nearly lost two friends to the Romulans’ botched experiment. And now here it was again, threatening to upend the politics of the Beta Quadrant. He didn’t know what the Breen’s angle was yet—just that they certainly had one. Riker knew that if they succeeded, phase weapons would be part of the Breen’s bag of tricks indefinitely.

  “Do you think the Baladonians phased the Ekorr to get rid of them?” Troi asked.

  “But this is in Ekorr.” Modan held up the empty canister. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Riker shook his head. “Enough waiting.” The admiral stood up and dusted himself off. “We’ve learned more just sitting here than I ever imagined we might—but it’s time to get out of here and sort this out. And to find our missing man, wherever he is.” He smiled at Troi. “We also have a child who’s missing us.”

  “If I know Christine, Natasha has nothing to worry about,” Troi said. “I'm sure she’s already got a team standing by in the transporter room ready to break us out.”

  “Let’s not leave them waiting,” Riker said. He clicked the combadge. “Titan!”

  Silence.

  “Vale!” Riker called. “Vale! Titan, this is Riker. Come in!”

  “You’re wasting your time, Admiral!” called out a deep female voice.

  Riker turned to see the open door behind him. There, in the entryway, stood Shayla and Thot Roje—both holding disruptors. The Breen snarled and squawked. Shayla, wearing an earpiece in one of her emerald ears, translated: “He says your crew up there is a bit busy at the moment. The Breen have arrived!”

  * * *

  “Red alert! Shields up!”

  The Breen ships had blazed out of warp, weapons already armed. Titan hadn’t even had time to identify the new arrivals before the first photon-torpedo barrage.

  “Forward shields at eighty-five percent,” Ensign Dakal said. “Holding.”

  “Return fire, closest attacker,” Vale said, still trying to get her bearings. She had been in main engineering with her science chief, Melora Pazlar, going over the reports from Enterprise’s interphase incident from years earlier, when the Breen had arrived. Admiral Riker had said the Baladonians were expecting one Breen vessel to fetch their emissary—not four, blasting away.

  “I identify the two Breen landers from Zellman’s Find,” Fo Hachesa, the third-shift watch officer, called out as he moved to the seat on the commander’s left. “A third Breen lander we haven’t seen before—and it looks like the battle cruiser Gor Taboka is with it.”

  “Good eye,” Vale said. “Concentrate fire on Taboka—and watch for the landers to peel off!”

  Within a second, they did, splitting off from their powerful escort in three different directions. All were still headed toward Garadius IV, but no two were close together. The Breen might not be understandable, but it was clear what they were trying to do now. Their landers at Zellman’s Find couldn’t take on Titan alone. With the battle cruiser running interference, the Breen were trying to punch through to Sanctum Isle, figuring at least one lander would make it.

  “Safe to assume those ships aren’t here just to offer their envoy a ride home,” Hachesa said. “They’re after the admiral.”

  “At a minimum,” Vale said, punching her combadge. “Mister Dakal, raise the admiral. Tell him he’s about to have company!”

  “They’re jamming us,” Dakal said. “From two sources. The Breen up here—and the Baladonians down there!”

  They’ve finally caught on. So much for talking to Riker, she thought. The same went for getting him off the planet. The transporter inhibitors in Lyceum Garadius were still operational.

  “Okay, everybody hang on,” Vale said. She gripped her armrests as the ship shook. “Forget Gor Taboka. Increase power to aft shields—we’re going after the landers!”

  * * *

  It was the strangest chase Tuvok had ever experienced—all the more so in that he had actually succeeded in evading what was now a huge number of pursuers.

  There were many of them, to be sure, and there was nothing real standing between hunter and prey. But the walls still looked like walls, and that had bought them seconds as they advanced farther ahead.

  After a few minutes, the Ekorr’s aim grew wilder, their shots fewer. Perhaps the Ekorr had sanely remembered that they were firing into areas some of their own people inhabited? The danger had kept Orica from straying too far from Tuvok—that, and her duty to arrest him. But she had never had time to try.

  At last, they reached another room Tuvok recognized: the library where Jakoh held court. The Baladonian leader was here, he noticed, as were several of his guards. The Breen envoy was here as well, as oblivious as the others to the phased visitors’ presence. Shayla was absent.

  Then his eyes lit on the exact thing he was looking for. He locked it in his mind. He would have to remember it, no matter what came in the moments ahead.

  Panting, Orica looked back. The chase had winded the woman, whose legs were a little less than half the length of his. The disruptor shots were no longer visible, and they sounded farther away. Turning, she looked up to see Tuvok right beside her, adjusting his stolen disruptor. When he put the weapon in his holster, she pointed her own disruptor at him.

  “That’s enough . . . Tuvok,” she said between breaths. “Thanks for saving me back there . . . but I have a job to do.”

  “As do I,” he said. He stepped closer, startling her. “And I am sorry I must do this.” His right hand shot out, grabbing her other arm.

  “Wait, what are you—” Orica started to say. But before she could finish her sentence, he yanked her close and jabbed at the blue button on her armlet.

  And that was when the pain really began—for both of them.

  Eleven

  * * *

  This is outrageous,” Riker said again, without any sense of irony. It really was outrageous, being prodded along with Troi and Modan up the long dungeon hallway to where they’d be carted off as captured pawns. Titan’s plans to rescue him had almost certainly gone awry, most likely thanks to the arrival of the Breen ships. He’d let things go too long, in part because he’d hoped to have another chance to work on the Baladonians.

  That infuriated him. It reminded him of times when Enterprise and other ships were endangered by politicos with aims separate from what good sense dictated. This fool’s errand had already jeopardized several members of his crew. When would the Federation next order Admiral Riker to do something Captain Riker never would have considered?

  The only way to balance things, Riker knew, was to make sure that whatever he asked of Titan’s crew mattered—and that any sacrifice he asked of them really was worth it. He couldn’t be like Pressman, endangering everyone merely on a hunch about what the future held. He had to make sure the risks he took paid off. But he wasn’t yet sure how this one would. There was no sound above of any rescue party arriving. Only the clomping feet of Shayla and her companion guards, walking ahead of and behind the trio.

  “Your ride’s almost here, Admiral,” the Baladonian woman said. “Thot Roje has gone ahead to thank my father.”

  “I don’t understand,” Riker said, climbing the last staircase. “I’ve told you how the Federation will react. What are the Breen offering you?”

  Shayla stopped as she reached the top of the stairs. “The Breen brought us peace,” she said. “The Ekorr disappearing: We don’t know how the Breen did it—but we’re pretty sure they did it. Thot Roje approached my father saying it would happen, and it did.” She glared at Riker. “After decades of Federation jibber-jabber, the Breen resolved our problem in months. The Baladonians respect strength—those who can get things done. You’re just part of our way of saying thanks!”

  “But it won’t be just us, Shayla. The Breen will want access to this plan
et, to your oceans and all their riches.”

  The Baladonian woman shrugged. “So what? We’ve never been able to get at any of it ourselves.”

  “That’s because you’ve been constantly at war,” Troi said. “If you had peace, you and the Ekorr together might have figured out a way to exploit the seas here.”

  Shayla rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous.” She pointed to the great doors to the library, up ahead. “Move. My father wants to, er, see you off!”

  * * *

  “Target two down!”

  Vale pumped her fist as the second Breen lander plummeted toward Garadius and its acidic seas, expelling a shower of escape pods as it fell. It had gone better than she’d imagined. The first lander was the only one she’d expected to take out: It was the calculated risk the Breen had intended, sacrificing a single vessel to Titan’s pursuit while the others doubled back to approach Sanctum Isle.

  But the Breen had made a mistake. Zellman’s Find was dotted with settlements on all sides that were objectives of the Breen, but the landers here were all heading for the same place. And so it was that even as the starship evaded the worst of the barrage coming from Gor Taboka behind them, Titan had pursued the first lander to where the other two were heading anyway.

  Now only one remained—and it had just been tagged by Titan’s phaser fire. The Breen lander put some distance between itself and Sanctum Isle, its captain evidently fearful of the same fate.

  It was a decision that came at the wrong time for Gor Taboka. “Hard about!” Vale ordered.

  Skimming the upper reaches of the planet’s exosphere, Titan’s lower hull blazed with heat as the ship spun, a stone being skipped on a lake. The pursuing cruiser made no attempt to slow down, its sharper angle of attack causing it to buffet against the atmosphere. For just an instant, it lost control—