by Dave Stern
All in all, a pretty good job had been done, he decided.
He’d save the detailed inspection for later, though. Right now the important thing was that 428 was empty. The adjoining door led him into 430, the converted sleeping quarters.
And this room, he saw instantly, was occupied.
A soldier, unconscious on the floor, just past the entryway. Two people on the bed, also lying still: a boy, farthest from him, who looked immediately familiar for some reason, and a woman, turned on her side, away from the door.
Even as Trip reached out a hand to roll her toward him, he realized whose face he was going to see. Who Peranda’s passengers were.
Captain Duvall and her son.
As he touched her shoulder, began to move her, he saw he was right. He saw something else as well.
Duvall’s eyes were wide open.
Even before Trip had a chance to absorb that information, she let out a scream and jumped up at him.
He stumbled backwards and tripped over the unconscious soldier. He toppled over on his back on the floor.
Duvall was on him in an instant. Trip tried to reach for his phase pistol, but in his weakened condition and inside the EVA suit, he felt like he was moving in slow motion. His arms wouldn’t do what his brain told them to—not quick enough, anyway.
Duvall pinned his arms down to the floor with her knees and pulled his phase pistol out herself. She jammed it up against his face mask, square between his eyes.
Then her expression changed.
She lowered the pistol. “Tucker?”
The word was barely audible through the mask.
She stepped back and let him get to his feet.
Even as Trip rose, she was walking back to the bed and reaching under the pillow.
She came up with an emergency breathing mask, put it on, and inhaled deeply.
She looked up and said something to him.
Trip tapped on the side of his helmet—can’t hear you.
“A good captain is always prepared,” she said, speaking loudly and clearly.
Next to her, the boy sat up in bed. He had a breathing mask too.
Trip opened a channel.
“Malcolm?”
“Right here. The corridor all set?”
“It’s clear. Four soldiers about ten meters down, another one inside Cabin 428, all right? And I’ve found Peranda’s prisoners too.”
“An unexpected bonanza.”
“You could say that. Listen, make it quick with those four, all right? I’m gonna have Ryan turn life support back on in this section now.”
“Will do. Reed out.”
Trip piped in Ryan and told him what to do. All the while, Duvall watched him, wondering what he was going to do. Trip was wondering that himself.
A minute passed. Travis came into the room and got the soldier Trip had fallen over, who was struggling back to consciousness. He looked at Duvall and the boy, and shot Trip a question with his eyes.
“Not a word about this just yet, all right, Travis?” Trip said over the com.
“Aye, sir. Not a word.”
Travis left. Trip took his helmet off. The air was stale, but he was able to breathe.
Duvall had her arm around her son. She looked up at him.
“Where’s Jonny?” she said.
Trip frowned.
“Jonny?”
“Captain Archer. I want to talk to him.”
“He’s not here.” Trip was puzzled. Jonny? Nobody called the captain Jonny—not that he knew of, anyway. And how did Duvall know that Archer had command of this ship?
Of course she knew, he realized. Sadir had known—he must have told her.
“Starfleet sent you, didn’t they?” she said. “I knew this day would come. I’m prepared to explain my actions. I won’t try and defend what I did, but I hope people will understand—”
“Captain,” Trip said, and then stopped. He didn’t know quite where to begin. What to say to Duvall. Was any of this his business, even?
“Starfleet didn’t send us. We just…” He frowned. “It’s a long story. And this is a complicated situation, ma’am.”
“It is that,” she said. “Sorry about before, but I thought you might have been someone else. Someone sent to hurt Lee.”
The boy looked up for the first time then, and Trip got a good look at him at last. He had to be twelve, maybe thirteen—skinny as a beanpole, but looking at his shoulders, his hands, his face, you could already see he was going to fill out. Going to end up bigger than his father, from what Trip remembered of Sadir. A lot bigger.
He looked at the boy’s face again, and decided that he didn’t look anything like the general. Not at all. Trip could see a bit of Captain Duvall in him—the eyes, especially—but the set of his jaw, the brow, the basic shape of his face…this boy was going to be his own man, clearly. And soon.
Trip frowned.
That sense of recognition was back again. He couldn’t place it.
“I can handle myself,” the boy—Lee—said. “Besides, Peranda wouldn’t have dared try anything.”
Trip forced himself not to smile. Teenage bluster—except that the kid was so serious, Trip almost believed him. Probably thought people really were afraid of him. And no wonder—he’d gotten so used to having people do for him, jump for him, that he’d forgotten the real reason why they obeyed—who they really took their orders from. Kid was in for a rude awakening, and soon.
“I’ll ask you to stay here,” Trip said, “until we decide what to do.”
That was part of the truth. He also had the feeling that if the Daedalus crew members found out their turncoat captain was on board with them, there would be a mighty ugly scene. Duvall might not get the chance to offer whatever explanations she had. He would have to trust her and Lee to keep to their cabin, though—he really couldn’t spare anyone to keep an eye on them.
And he couldn’t spare any more time here. He had to check the rest of this deck for Parenda’s little booby traps, and then start on D and E as well. They needed the colonel and his crew secured, and then they needed to find the people who really belonged on this ship. Enterprise’s crew. Though Kairn would certainly be interested in Duvall and her son. Still, he would hold off contacting Eclipse until he had found the captain. He would leave it to Archer to decide what to do about these two.
Jonny. Trip smiled.
Something told him that in this universe, there had been a little more going on between the captain and Duvall than a case of hero worship.
Nineteen
THEY BEGAN SEEING the first signs of battle about half an hour after leaving the Belt behind them. A hunk of metal, a cube four meters square, drifted past them to starboard.
“Analysis confirms. That is the reaction chamber of a Stinger vessel,” T’Pol said, studying her console. “I am picking up a trail of wreckage leading toward the site General Makandros marked for us.”
Archer nodded. That trail was all that remained of the DEF’s First Battalion—Makandros’s ships that had been ambushed by Elson’s forces. The general had asked them to come this way during their reconnaissance, to search for specific items among the wreckage: debris from PDC vessels—computer storage arrays, weapons systems, engine components—that might contain salvageable data, information Makandros could use in the coming days.
The captain guided the Stinger along the debris path now, marveling at the extent of destruction. Ships blown in half, ships with their hulls blackened and scarred by weapons fire, vast quantities of metal and plastic too melted or mangled to attempt to identify—it had clearly been a violent battle, and the wreckage itself told the story. The DEF, surprised, outnumbered, outgunned, communications suddenly jammed, retreating in close formation, instantly recognizing the battle as lost, trying to preserve an escape route for at least one of their ships to warn General Makandros of Elson’s treachery.
The captain suddenly remembered the trick Makandros had used to capture them after their esc
ape from Rava, when the general’s computers had seized control of the Stinger’s guidance system and weaponry. He wondered if the retreating Stingers of the First Battalion had utilized the same strategy to maintain such close formation in retreat.
“Considerable amounts of radiation in this area, sir,” T’Pol said. “It is affecting our sensors, particularly long-range scanning ability.”
“Let’s not spend a lot of time here then,” Archer said. “One quick pass through, see if we can spot what the general’s after, and then we’re on our way.”
“Aye, sir.”
Archer switched them onto autopilot, instructing the ship’s guidance system to parallel the debris trail. Mentally, his focus shifted from the wreckage laid out before them to the next stop in their mission—Colonna Station, a DEF military outpost halfway between the Denari system and the interstellar void. While the outpost had reported no signs of PDC forces in their area, Makandros’s greatest fear was another flanking maneuver by Elson’s forces. If PDC ships surrounded the combined Guild/DEF fleet before they were ready to fight—before their logistics and supply units had fully integrated the two forces—the war would be over before it started.
A smear of blue and green in the far left-hand corner of the viewscreen suddenly caught the captain’s attention—the anomaly. They would pass near it on their way to Colonna—near enough to get a good long look at the object. As he and T’Pol had discussed on resuming their stations first thing this morning, they planned to slow from full impulse during their closest approach, to allow time for the Denari sensors to fully map not just the anomaly, but the surrounding region of space. T’Pol also planned on thoroughly scanning the area for any artificial satellites—though Makandros and Kairn had been quite insistent that neither maintained such devices in the region, they had already passed a sufficient number of them on their journey to make Archer think it a chance worth taking.
The captain still had no idea how they were going to get the data they needed to return home. His sleep the night before had been fitful, his mind wrestling with the question until far too late in the evening. Only one idea of any real merit had occurred to him: Victor Brodesser. He’d learned from Kairn that the professor was with Trip and Hoshi, and in Archer’s opinion, if there was anyone who could solve the impossible, it would be Daedalus’s designer.
“Captain?”
He turned to T’Pol.
“Picking up an energy source, sir. Headed straight toward us,” she said.
“And there it is.” That was Yamani, at the weapons console. He was pointing to the main viewscreen, where a barely visible speck of light, at about ten o’clock relative to their current heading, glinted in the distance.
“What is it?”
“A ship, sir,” T’Pol said. “Further telemetry coming in now.”
A status indicator on Archer’s console began blinking. Yamani had just put weapons on alert status. Archer nodded in approval. Though the odds of running into PDC forces out here were slim…
Better safe than sorry.
“Life signs?” he asked.
T’Pol shook her head. “The radiation is masking my readings.”
“Try hailing them.”
“I have been. No response.”
“Let’s take a closer look.” He switched the viewscreen to magnification level five. Immediately the image jumped into focus.
It was a Stinger—exactly like their ship. It looked virtually undamaged, some scoring from weapons fire on the side hull. Its running lights were on.
“Reactor is on-line, obviously,” T’Pol announced. “Core temperature slightly higher than nominal but within acceptable boundaries. Hull is intact. Major systems are still powered. No structural damage—”
“Still nothing on communications?”
“No, sir. One moment.” She made a series of adjustments to the sensor control panel. “Still no life signs, either. Although, again, the radiation is masking a great deal of the incoming telemetry.”
The captain frowned. If there were survivors…injured crew…
He turned around in his seat and looked through the cockpit entrance to the main cabin beyond.
“D.O.,” he called out.
The young woman, stationed at the front-most starboard weapons console, looked up.
“Sir?”
“This ship has EVA suits?”
“Yes, sir,” O’Neill replied. “One for each of us, two spares.”
Fifteen, then. Archer thought a moment.
“I want you to prepare an EVA team,” he told her. “Eight people. We’ll bring our ship alongside the derelict, you’ll board and search for survivors. Ferry over spare suits if—”
“Captain,” T’Pol interrupted, “that will not be necessary.”
He turned in his seat to face her.
“There is a rupture in the other ship’s coolant line. The on-board atmosphere is contaminated.”
Engine coolant. Archer sighed and shook his head.
They were all dead, then.
“Is the ship salvageable?”
She nodded. “Once the gas is vented.”
“Makandros will want to know. Transmit this location and our data to him.”
“Aye, sir.” T’Pol swiveled in her chair to access the controls.
The instrument panel before her exploded.
The ship pitched to starboard. Archer barely managed to stay in his seat.
“Two ships!” Yamani shouted. “At nine and three o’clock, both firing projectile weapons. All weapons stations, return fire!”
Data streamed across the captain’s console. Archer took a second to take in the smallest, most salient bits of it—the two ships were PDC, fighter class, small two-person vessels, directly to port and starboard, closing fast—then he disengaged the autopilot and took control of the helm. Set course: twenty degrees down from zero axis and straight ahead.
He punched engines, full impulse.
“Where the hell did they come from? T’Pol?”
There was no response.
Archer turned.
She lay still, head and shoulders draped across the com panel. He saw blood—green blood; he had never seen Vulcan blood this close before—streaming from a cut on her forehead.
“Medkit!” he shouted, turning his head. “I need a medkit up here, and I need someone on sensors. Kowalski! Get—”
Space in front of them flared bright white.
Archer raised a hand to shield his eyes. That and the fact that he was facing away from the viewscreen saved him from being completely blinded. He braced for the shock wave. It hit a nanosecond later, the same way the wave back in Sydney that had sworn him off bodysurfing forever had hit: like a bad-tempered Sumo wrestler.
He was shoved backwards in his seat. The ship shuddered. The captain could hear it—literally hear it—trying to shake apart. Metal groaned.
That was no projectile weapon.
“Ensign?” He turned to Yamani, the question in his eyes.
“Photon charges—about a half-dozen of them.”
“They didn’t come from those two little ships,” Archer said.
“No, sir. Tracking their trajectory.” Yamani frowned. “Sir…”
From the tone of his voice, Archer knew it wasn’t good news.
“There’s a third ship,” Yamani said. “Much larger than the other two. It fired the photon charges.”
Archer took a quick glance at the sensor panel and saw the ensign was right. The third ship was easily twice their size. And cutting hard to follow their change of course—moving at .75 light speed. The Stinger’s impulse engines topped out at a max of .6 light speed.
Not good. Not only were they outnumbered, they were outclassed as well.
Time to get out of here, he thought, and reached down to engage the warp engines.
They were off-line.
He punched open a channel to the Stinger’s engineering chamber just below the main deck.
“Sir, I�
�” It was Lieutenant Hess.
“I need warp drive,” Archer said, not wasting any time on preamble. “Now.”
“I can’t give it to you. That first blast destabilized the reaction chamber.”
“Stabilize it.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“How long?”
“At least an hour.”
“You’ve got ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes to realign the crystals? It can’t be done, sir.”
“Make it happen, Lieutenant. Or we’re all dead.”
He closed the channel.
“You are being unrealistic, Captain.”
That was T’Pol’s voice.
Archer looked to his right.
His science officer was sitting up, holding a compress to her forehead with one hand, working the sensor console with the other. Kowalski stood over her with the medkit, frowning.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re all right?”
“I am fine. Ensign, you can return to your station. Captain, it normally takes a day to align the crystals in the reaction chamber. Ten minutes is an unrealistic time frame.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s three against one here, Sub-Commander. Ten minutes is what we have—if we’re lucky.”
As if to prove his point, Yamani spoke up.
“Here they come again,” the ensign called out.
Archer checked the console. The two smaller PDC ships were indeed coming hard on their tail, trying to herd them into the larger vessel’s line of fire. Pincer formation—the captain recognized it once. Looked to him like the Denari had taken a few strategy lessons from Daedalus’s computer, as well as weapons and warp drive. The pincer formation was a textbook attack maneuver, right out of the Academy’s first-year battle tactics course.
Which the captain had aced.
“Hold on to your stomachs,” he said, and hit braking thrusters hard as he could.
