Daedalus's Children

by Dave Stern

  Makandros smiled as well.

  “Captain?”

  Archer snapped back to the here and now.

  “Weapons are targeting us, sir.” That was Yamani, from the weapons control station Briatt had configured for him in the cockpit. He was on Archer’s left, while T’Pol’s station was to the captain’s right.

  Archer looked at his sensor display. What he saw there gave him pause.

  Eclipse might be a bucket of bolts, but according to the data coming in, she did have pulse weapons fully capable of blasting them halfway across the Belt.

  “Are they responding to our hails yet?”

  T’Pol shook her head. “No.”

  “Weapons locked, Captain.”

  “Transmit surrender,” Archer said to T’Pol.

  “Yes, sir.” She listened a moment, then shook her head. “No response.”

  He sat back in his chair and shook his head.

  “They’re not just going to blow us out of the sky, are they?”

  “The possibility exists. They are at war, Captain. With the persons whose ship we are in.”

  Archer knew the possibility existed, of course, but he’d assumed that approaching with shields down, weapons unarmed, would at least convince the Guild to listen to them.

  “A second ship has locked weapons on us, sir. Recommend evasive action—now,” Yamani said.

  The captain shook his head. “No.” Any action they took at this point other than remaining on course would give the Guild an excuse to fire.

  “T’Pol.”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you picking up any com traffic between the Guild ships?”

  “One minute.” She bent over the console, listening intently to the traffic coming in over her earpiece.

  “I am picking up considerable activity on several frequencies,” she said. “Some of it is between the Guild vessels, but I cannot be certain if the transmissions are simply relaying telemetry between vessels or if actual communication is taking place.”

  “You can determine the frequencies, though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s cut in.”

  “Sir?”

  “Broadcast a transmission over the frequencies they’re using.”

  “Their computers may be programmed to ignore unauthorized transmissions as noise.”

  “Let’s just try it, Sub-Commander.”

  “Very well.” She worked for a moment, adjusting the controls at her station. “Ready, Captain.”

  Archer nodded.

  “Attention, Guild ships. This is Captain Jonathan Archer of Enterprise, flying under a flag of truce on behalf of General Makandros. Please respond on this channel. Over.”

  They waited.

  “T’Pol?”

  “No response.”

  “Let’s try another one of those frequencies.”

  “Yes, sir.” Again, she made adjustments at her station. “Go ahead.”

  Archer repeated his message, and waited.

  “Still nothing.”

  “We’re too close, Captain,” Yamani said. “Sir, traveling at this speed, we will be unable to evade fire.”

  “Damn it.” Archer frowned. One last try.

  “T’Pol, give me back standard hailing frequencies. Let’s try and target one of the smaller ships with our message.”

  “Not Eclipse?”

  “Not Eclipse. The smaller vessels are less likely to have command staff on board and may—”

  The screen came to life.

  A man—his upright, military bearing instantly reminding the captain of Makandros—was staring at them, a look somewhere between confusion and anger on his face.

  “You’re Archer? Of the Enterprise?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A moment, please.”

  The screen went dark again.

  “Well, we seem to have made contact,” Archer said, letting out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.

  “They’ve still got weapons locked on us, sir,” Yamani said.

  “That’s all right.” Archer slowed the Stinger’s velocity so that they held the same position relative to the Guild fleet.

  Just as he looked up from his station, the screen lit up.

  The same man stared down at him, only now, a strikingly beautiful woman stood behind him at his shoulder. She looked at Archer and nodded.

  “You’re right, sir,” she said. “Same uniform.”

  Same uniform? Archer frowned.

  Before he could ask what the woman meant by that, the man spoke.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” He cleared his throat. “Captain Archer, I’m Marshal Kairn, commander of the Guild Warship Eclipse. And I must ask you what you mean by flying on behalf of the DEF.”

  “Exactly what I said. I’m here on behalf of General Makandros to propose terms of a truce.” Archer frowned. “Now I have to ask you: What did you two mean, ‘same uniform’?”

  “Exactly what I said.” Kairn smiled. “Same uniform as Trip and Hoshi.”

  Archer’s heart leapt into his throat.

  “Commander Tucker?” Archer couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice—or off his face. “Ensign Sato. You’ve seen them?”

  Kairn nodded. “They’ve spent most of the last two weeks with us, Captain.”

  “Let me talk to them, please.”

  “I’m afraid they’re gone,” Kairn said.

  “What? Where?” the captain asked. “Can you get a signal—”

  “Save your questions, Captain,” Kairn said. “Why don’t you come aboard, and we’ll talk.”

  Eleven

  “SIR?” Hoshi prompted again.

  Trip sat in the pilot’s seat aboard the just barely cloaked cell-ship, hands poised over the controls, thinking. He had to decide what to do before they were blown to bits.

  As if on cue, space in front of them flashed white again.

  He couldn’t help but whistle admiringly.

  “That is one big gun.”

  “Not a very accurate one, though,” Brodesser said. “That blast missed its target by a considerable distance as well.”

  Trip nodded. He was reading the same sensor console as Brodesser. Whoever was firing that weapon—a fixed gun emplacement on the orbital platform above Kota—needed a little more practice. Either that, or glasses.

  Trip frowned. Something about the energy readings from that weapon suddenly looked very familiar. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t place it.

  “I’ve identified the DEF ships. Makandros’s forces,” Brodesser said. “I recommend we make for their positions and surrender.”

  That seemed to be about their only option. They could not escape on impulse, and it would be suicide to stay where they were. Trip only wondered why the professor had suggested surrendering to Makandros, rather than the forces defending Kota, then realized that he had the answer to that himself.

  A solar system away from here, the civil war was raging on the Denari homeworld as well. And there, Elson had dropped at least two nuclear warheads. On his own people.

  Giving up to a man capable of doing that didn’t seem like a good idea to Trip either.

  On the other hand, he didn’t like the idea of giving up at all.

  “I’ve isolated their hailing frequencies,” Hoshi put in. “All transmissions are scrambled, but I can get us through to them. Say the word.”

  That word being surrender.

  That word, when said, would put their fate back into the hands of others.

  Trip had had quite enough of that over the last few weeks.

  “Nah,” he said.

  Brodesser turned to him, surprised. “Trip?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Trip said. “But Hoshi and I—we’re just about out of time. I don’t think we want to spend the next few days trying to explain ourselves all over again.”

  “But—”

  “You really want to see the inside of a prison again? Not me. And I’ve just been breaking people out.
You’ve been on the other side of those bars.”

  Brodesser hesitated. “What do you propose we do instead?”

  Trip frowned. That was the question, wasn’t it? The display showed him the cloak had about thirty seconds worth of life left in it, and then they would be visible for one and all to see.

  Shortly after that, if they didn’t surrender, they would be space dust.

  What to do? Kamikaze run? No point in that. He’d just ruled out surrender—the cell-ship’s weapons wouldn’t do much for them, and there was nothing else aboard the little ship that—

  Trip’s eyes fell on the storage compartments above them, and he smiled.

  “I have an idea about that.”

  “Shutting down sensors,” Brodesser said.

  “Roger,” Trip replied.

  “Disabling the UT module,” Hoshi said.

  “Copy that as well.” Trip looked down at his console. Those were the last systems to go; they had already cut power to everything except the cloak and the maneuvering thrusters. Shields, weapons, communications—all were off-line to enable them to keep the cloak functioning, to stay hidden, for as long as possible.

  Check that. The last systems to go save one.

  Trip took a deep breath.

  “Disabling life support,” he said, reaching for the console.

  At the last second, before punching the buttons that would shut off the flow of oxygen to the cabin, he turned to Brodesser.

  “All set?”

  The professor nodded.

  Trip turned around to Hoshi. She too, nodded her readiness.

  He punched the button.

  A light began blinking red on the console. Trip watched the diagnostic for a moment longer, as the status indicators for the ship’s circulation systems fell below the nominal line…

  And kept falling.

  He opened the com circuit on his EVA suit.

  “Everyone all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Yes, sir. So far, so good.”

  “Glad to hear it.” They were all in the Denari EVA suits now. They had only a half hour’s worth of oxygen, but that half hour should be more than enough to get them inside one of the orbital platform’s hangars—specifically, the one farthest from the main battle theater, which sensors had shown them was empty—and from there, into a contained atmosphere.

  Assuming, that is, the cloak could hold out that long.

  Trip activated thrusters and set his sights on the platform. He was flying without instruments, by what he saw in front of him. The fighting was more sporadic now. Makandros’s ships seemed to have regrouped just out of range of the platform’s weapons, though every few minutes one of them would buzz in close and draw fire.

  Good. The lull enabled him to take them straight into the platform, rather than having to curve around weapons fire that might accidentally disable them.

  It also gave him an opportunity to study the massive platform up close—which was easily the size of the Warp Five complex, and then some. Not that much of a surprise, considering how many ships Trip knew of that had come out of this facility. Though it had obviously seen better days: the platform arm closest to them was pitted and scarred all across its surface. Repair crews in EVA suits of their own scurried in and out of an area near a large gun emplacement that was particularly badly marked. The gun emplacement, Trip realized, where all that errant fire had come from.

  As they banked toward the hangar, he got a head-on look at the weapon, and blinked.

  “Hoshi.”

  “Yes, sir, I see it too.” She was leaning over his shoulder, peering through the forward glass.

  “Tell me that’s not a phase cannon,” Trip said.

  “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  Trip smiled. He supposed the Denari’s inability to shoot straight with the weapon could be forgiven. After all, they couldn’t have had it for more than a week or so.

  “Enterprise,” Hoshi said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. “She’s here.”

  “Could be. Let’s not get our hopes up,” Trip said. They hadn’t picked the ship up on any of their scans, after all—though who was to say this was the only part of the Kota system where fighting was taking place? Enterprise could be in the middle of a battle on the other side of the moon, or the gas giant, and they would have no way of knowing. And as far as the phase cannon was concerned, yes, the most likely scenario was that the ship had been here and the cannon constructed by copying the one on board Enterprise. Trip realized with a start that cannibalized parts from Enterprise, along with sufficiently gifted engineers—Daedalus’s engineers, for example—could have built it from scratch, using plans. Another possibility was that Enterprise had been here and gone. No way of telling for certain right now.

  The cell-ship passed into the vast, empty hangar. Trip maneuvered it close to one of the hangar walls and used mooring clamps to secure it in place.

  He powered down the thrusters. Then he shut down the cloak.

  They waited in silence.

  “Nothing unusual. No increase in message traffic,” Hoshi announced a minute later, listening to the reactivated com. “They don’t know we’re here.”

  “Good.” Trip nodded. “Then I’ll get going.”

  He reached for the airlock hatch.

  “Trip.” Brodesser’s voice stopped him. “You’re sure about this? Why don’t we see if Hoshi can—”

  “Professor, with all due respect,” Trip said, “we’ve talked this through. You work on the ship. Let me see what I can find out from their computers.” He nodded out the forward window port, in the direction of the orbital platform. “I won’t take any risks, believe me.”

  “Please don’t. Remember, you lack a cloaking device of your own.”

  Trip smiled. “Yes, sir. I know. Maybe you could build me one.”

  Through the EVA helmet, Brodesser returned his grin. “After I fix this, I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “Fair enough.” He turned to Hoshi. “I’m taking one of the communicators. You hear anything that I ought to know, contact me.”

  “Aye, sir. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” He also fit one of their phase pistols to the suit—just in case. Then, having vented the ship’s atmosphere earlier, he opened the hatch. With a final thumbs-up to both of them, he pushed himself free of the cell-ship.

  Trip hadn’t been EVA in a long time in a suit other than the high-tech ones Enterprise carried. The Denari one lacked the kind of precise controls those had. His gentle push out of the hatch took him thirty meters straight toward the open end of the hangar before he could get turned back around, headed toward one of the airlocks that dotted the vast interior walls.

  On his way, he floated past the forward window port of the cell-ship, and waved.

  Inside, he saw Brodesser and Hoshi shucking their EVA suits. They’d already repressurized the vessel and reactivated the systems they’d need in order to work. That made them vulnerable in there; it was kind of like turning on a night light in the middle of a vast empty room and hoping no one noticed. A stray sensor beam, a ship happening to drift by the hangar and peer in…

  They were sitting ducks in there. It wasn’t just Trip who had to hurry, it was all of them.

  He pushed off then, headed toward the nearest airlock.

  A minute later, he was through it and inside the hangar proper, in a high-ceilinged chamber the size of a small church. It was a staging area where the workers gathered before heading out into the hangars to their jobs. EVA suits, tools of all kinds, airsleds and other small utility vehicles lined the walls. There was nothing that looked like a com terminal or a data station anywhere in sight.

  Trip shucked his own EVA suit and left it in the airlock he’d come through.

  He passed through the chamber to a door at the far end and opened it.

  A long corridor, gun-metal gray, dimly lit, stretched out before him. Off in the distance, it bent sharply to the left and
disappeared. If memory served him correctly about the station’s structure, it led toward the central platform.

  He paused a moment and listened. Nothing.

  He started down the corridor. At the bend, he paused again. Still nothing.

  He frowned. Perhaps fifty meters ahead, the dim lighting suddenly brightened. That part of the station was clearly active—and he doubted that in the middle of an all-out attack like the one they were currently experiencing, it was deserted.

  He took a step back the way he’d come and flipped open his communicator.

  “Hoshi?”

  “Right here.”

  “Anything on the com?”

  “Nothing about Enterprise. But the professor was right—the ships attacking are Makandros’s. They’re demanding that Kota surrender.”

  “And—”

  “Kota’s telling them to go to hell. How about you, sir? Any luck?”

  “Nothing yet. I—”

  A noise sounded behind him—machinery, starting up. Trip turned and saw a bulkhead lowering from the ceiling.

  When it hit the floor, it was going to cut off his escape route.

  Operating on instinct alone, he dove to the floor and rolled up underneath the bulkhead. He came up on his knees…

  And saw a second bulkhead coming down ten meters ahead of him. This section of the corridor was being sealed off.

  Instinct, again, told him he did not want to be inside it.

  He rolled back underneath the bulkhead as it slammed down to the floor, making an airtight seal.

  He was cut off from the cell-ship.

  “Sir?” Hoshi said over the communicator. “You all right?”

  “Fine.” His eyes scanned the wall, looking for some sort of control panel, something that might let him raise the wall in front of him. Nothing. “Listen, I’ll call you when I can. Out.”

  He flipped the communicator shut just as a red light above the bulkhead began flashing. The corridor lights came on full.

  This was not good.

  The bulkhead had a clear panel set in it at eye level. Trip pressed his face up against it and peered through.

  Inside the newly formed chamber, a hatch was swinging open.

  Somebody—whether it was Makandros’s forces, the troops defending the platform, or someone else entirely—was about to join him on this part of the base.