All of which makes it even more important that we succeed, T’Jul thought, trying to rally herself. She stood from the command chair and strode to the port side of the bridge, to where her executive officer crewed the weapons and defense console. “Atreev,” she said, “precisely how much time do we need in order to cloak?” The subcommander confirmed the exact interval for her, a small amount of time that they had nevertheless been unable to secure for themselves during the battle. “What if we blanket the space between us and the Starfleet vessel with disruptor bolts?” she asked. “Not attempting to strike the enemy, but to interfere with the operation of their sensors . . . to obscure the Eletrix just long enough for us to cloak and go to warp.”
Atreev appeared to consider the question, even as he worked his controls and launched another barrage of weapons fire at the Federation vessel. The compact but powerful ship seemed a more or less equal match for Eletrix, but throughout the course of the battle, the Starfleet crew had gained just enough of an edge to foreshadow the eventual outcome of their encounter. “Our generators are not functioning at optimal capacity,” Atreev said. “If we fire our disruptors in the way you suggest, while leaving enough power to cloak and go to warp, we wouldn’t be able to defend ourselves in the interim.”
Eletrix rocked again as another Starfleet weapon punched at the warbird’s shields. When the ship had steadied, T’Jul said, “We’re barely able to defend ourselves right now.” She peered at the main screen and saw the Federation starship flash across the field of view. “We don’t need to win this fight,” she told Atreev. “We need to escape it.” She looked back at her executive officer, who nodded in agreement.
T’Jul paced back over to stand in front of her command chair. Addressing her entire bridge crew, she said, “It is of vital importance to the Empire that we deliver the Dominion equipment we have aboard. To that end, we are going to lay down a line of fire to obscure the sensor readings of the Federation starship.” She gazed back toward her executive officer. “Subcommander Atreev, at the moment of maximum dispersal of the disruptor salvo, you will cloak us.”
“Yes, Commander,” said Atreev.
Turning to the starboard side of the bridge, toward the piloting console, T’Jul said, “Lieutenant Torlanta, once we are cloaked, you will take us immediately to warp. I want rapid, random course changes at short intervals, until we are certain that we are not being pursued.”
“Yes, Commander,” acknowledged Torlanta.
On the viewer, T’Jul watched as the Starfleet vessel arced around, its crew clearly intending to make another weapons run at Eletrix. The commander waited until it appeared at its farthest reach from her ship, then called out, “Execute.”
At once, T’Jul heard the sounds of the weapons and defense station as Atreev worked its controls. On the viewscreen, a throng of bright green disruptor bolts raced into the area between Eletrix and the Federation starship. The line of attack looked haphazard, but as weapons began to detonate, the effectiveness of the firing pattern became clear. The output of the exploding disruptor bolts spread out and joined together, forming a transitory but uninterrupted veil of energy in space.
“Cloaking,” Atreev said. The lighting on the bridge changed, dimming and gaining a green tint, signaling to the crew the operation of the ship’s cloak.
“Going to warp,” Torlanta said, but then Eletrix shook strongly again. The intensity of the bridge lighting returned to normal at once, its green hue lost.
“The cloak is down,” Atreev said, stating the obvious. “Shields down to nineteen percent.”
Before T’Jul could ask what had happened, she saw a second, smaller Starfleet craft rush across the viewscreen, a pair of phasers firing from its bow. Behind it, the broad shroud of disruptor energy faded into nothingness. The other Federation vessel sprang forward, quantum torpedoes bounding from its forward weapons ports toward Eletrix.
“Return fire when you can,” T’Jul ordered, knowing that it would take some time to recharge the disruptors. The deck shifted beneath the commander as the quantum torpedoes landed. Her leg struck the edge of the command chair, and she fell heavily into the seat, a movement that seemed to perfectly capture the sense of resignation that tightened about her. She felt anger toward Tomalak and the Tal Shiar, but also disappointment and disgrace for her inability to accomplish the goals of the mission they had set her. More than anything, loss and sadness threatened to overwhelm her, emotions she sustained both for herself and for her crew. Her time as their commander had been the most fulfilling not just of her career, but of her entire life. She had worked so long and so diligently to attain her rank and her position, and yet her tenure would be short-lived.
For T’Jul knew how the day would end for Eletrix and those aboard the Romulan warbird.
Captain Ro Laren closed her eyes and saw the end of her life rapidly approaching. She held her injured right arm against her body, feeling the ache deep within it, the fall she’d taken that had pinned it beneath her still fresh in her mind. Breen disruptors had thrashed Deep Space 9, sending her sprawling to the deck in ops. She had picked herself up, though, and fought back—just as all of her command crew there had.
But DS9 had been compromised when a pair of bombs planted in its lower core had detonated, causing the loss of containment for two of the station’s reactors. Her crew jettisoned one of the reactors, but the explosions had damaged the second ejection mechanism. There had been no time for Ro and her officers to even attempt anything else.
And then, as though the Prophets objected to the impending loss of Deep Space 9 and all aboard the station, the wormhole had blossomed into existence, a refulgent flower denying the great desert of space. Befitting its cognomen among the faithful, the Celestial Temple then delivered a potential savior into the Alpha Quadrant: U.S.S. Robinson. Not a believer herself, Ro nevertheless focused on the identity of the Galaxy-class starship’s commanding officer: the Emissary himself, Benjamin Sisko.
But whatever hope Robinson might have brought with it had vanished as quickly as the wormhole. The Tzenkethi marauder wheeled around, its tail demolishing Kasidy Yates’s cargo vessel. Suddenly, Captain Sisko’s presence on the battlefield seemed less like a cause for hope than a brutality conveyed by indifferent circumstance.
At which point, DS9’s first officer, Colonel Cenn Desca, had walked up beside Ro and whispered that only twenty seconds remained before the station’s damaged reactor would explode. Ro thought of Quark in that moment, and hoped that he had been evacuated and had made it to safety. She also felt an awful sense of helplessness as she peered around at the women and men with whom she had lived and worked, some for just months, but most of them for years. It tore at her that she had let them down, that in the end, all their efforts, all their dreams, essentially came to nothing.
But isn’t that the truth of all things? Ro remembered asking herself in what she had known would be the last moments of her life. No matter what we do, a day will come when we are no longer here.
The thoughts had struck her even then as fatalistic. At least we will die together, she told herself, attempting to recast her final feelings. At least we will die together in a place where we worked with each other for the greater good.
And then, almost miraculously, Ro’s vision had begun to cloud with white motes—not from being vaporized by a reactor going critical and destroying Deep Space 9, but from the familiar effect of a transporter beam.
Captain Ro Laren opened her eyes and saw the rest of her life stretching before her. She stood in the cockpit of Rio Grande, behind Dalin Zivan Slaine, who sat with Ensign Rahendervakell th’Shant at the main control console of the runabout. When the bombs had been discovered in the lower core, Ro had charged th’Shant—an engineer with considerable piloting experience—with aiding in the evacuation of Deep Space 9’s civilian population. Along with Ensign Richard Gresham aboard Rio Grande, the engineer made several runs to Bajor, ferrying scores of passengers each time. They had just transported
another load of people aboard from the station when the Defiant crew discovered the Romulan warbird attempting to steal into the Alpha Quadrant through the wormhole. Ro ordered the vessel fired upon, but a Tzenkethi marauder and a Breen warship decloaked, intercepting DS9’s quantum torpedoes and phasers. Despite the risk to the civilians aboard Rio Grande, th’Shant chose to take the runabout into battle, eventually firing on all three enemy ships.
Just before DS9’s reactor had blown up, resulting in the destruction of the station, Ensign Gresham had detected the looming disaster on the runabout’s sensors. Th’Shant opted to fly Rio Grande within transporter range of DS9, and Gresham beamed over everybody in ops, including most of Ro’s senior staff: Security Chief Jefferson Blackmer, Science Officer John Candlewood, Slaine, Cenn, and the captain herself. Ro had never felt happier to see the inside of a runabout, but she could not prevent herself from thinking of the many other Starfleet officers who’d still been aboard Deep Space 9, as well as the civilians there who’d been awaiting rescue.
Through the forward viewports, the Romulan warbird began to fade from sight. Ro understood the implications of that: once cloaked, the enemy vessel could evade detection and escape not only from the Bajoran system, but from Federation space. After all that had transpired—the sabotage on DS9, the attack by the three Typhon Pact starships, the destruction of the station—Ro could not allow that to happen. She could not deny her hunger for justice and even vengeance, but more than that, she felt driven by the need for actionable intelligence. Why had the Pact taken the actions it had, and what did it mean for the future?
“Fire,” Ro ordered Dalin Slaine. Highly skilled in the use of shipboard weapons, the strategic operations officer had taken over at tactical for the less experienced Gresham, who had moved to a support console on the starboard side of the cockpit. Slaine reached forward on her panel and worked its controls. Phaser fire immediately shot from the bow and bombarded the spot where the Romulan vessel had just disappeared. For a moment, the energy blasts seemed to stop in the middle of empty space, but then the form of the warbird materialized once more.
Off to port, the wall of disruptor energy the Romulans had created began to disperse, and Defiant became visible beyond it. At once, the Federation starship assailed the Romulan vessel with quantum torpedoes. “Take evasive action,” Ro told th’Shant, wanting to provide the Defiant crew with a clear field of fire. “Then bring us around again.” The young officer quickly swung the runabout around in a wide arc, away from the warbird.
“Captain,” said a familiar voice from behind Ro—a voice that caused her to force back a smile. She turned to look past the rest of the ops crew to see that one of the evacuees had entered the cockpit from the aft living compartment, where nearly a hundred civilians crowded together. He held a crimson carryall at his side, its strap slung across his shoulder. Ro guessed that none of the people rescued from the station would have been permitted to bring along any of their belongings, but it didn’t surprise her that Quark had somehow managed to defy that order. “Do you know when you’ll be able to bring us to Bajor?”
“Quark, now’s not the time,” Ro told her old friend and sometime lover. Her words came out more abruptly than she’d intended, but considering the situation, she would have been justified in having him hauled bodily out of the cockpit. Still, it felt good to see him, to know that he’d escaped Deep Space 9 before the end.
Colonel Cenn walked over to the barkeep—who, Ro reminded herself, also served as the Ferengi ambassador to Bajor—and took him by the elbow. The first officer attempted to steer him back through the aft door. Instead, Quark pulled his arm from Cenn’s grasp and sidestepped around him.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Captain,” Quark said, his tone noticeably even. He sounded neither angry nor scared, but rather, concerned. “It’s just that some of the people back there are beginning to panic.” He hiked a hand back up over his shoulder, pointing a thumb toward the rear of the runabout. “Morn’s just about ready to open a hatch and abandon ship.”
Before Ro could respond, Dalin Slaine said, “Captain, we’re coming back around.”
Ro held Quark’s gaze a moment longer, then looked to Cenn. “Desca,” she said, “see if you can calm our passengers down, would you?”
Cenn nodded. Evidently satisfied, Quark headed back into the aft section of the runabout. The first officer followed.
Ro turned back to the main console. Through the ports, she saw both Defiant and the Romulan vessel in frozen tableau, the battlefield grown surprisingly still. Lieutenant Commander Blackmer at once sat down at a companel on the port bulkhead and tapped at some controls.
“Bring us to a full stop,” Ro ordered.
“Yes, sir,” said th’Shant, working the conn to halt Rio Grande. “What’s going on?” he asked, clearly puzzled by the sudden cessation of hostilities.
“Captain, I’m reading an open comm channel between the Defiant and the Romulan ship,” reported Blackmer.
“Let’s see it,” Ro said.
Blackmer operated the companel, and an image appeared on its screen. Ro’s second officer, Lieutenant Commander Wheeler Stinson, stood in the center of the Defiant bridge. He had dark, wavy hair and a long face, with a mouth that naturally turned down at the edges. Ro had always thought of his countenance as brooding, though he in general had an upbeat, if serious, personality.
“—of the Federation vessel Defiant,” said Stinson. “Our sensors indicate that your weapons are off line and that your shields are on the verge of collapse. We demand that you lower your shields at once. Your crew will be taken into custody for treaty violations and acts of aggression against the Federation. We will provide any medical assistance your crew may require.” Stinson stood quietly in the center of the Defiant bridge, obviously expecting a response.
Ro waited as Blackmer studied the companel. “I’m not reading any return communication from the Romulans,” said the security chief.
“No, of course not,” Ro said. In her experience, Romulan arrogance knew no bounds. “Jeff, open a channel to the Defiant. I want to speak with—”
The Romulan warbird exploded. Virtually everybody in the Rio Grande cockpit flinched, Ro included. The white-hot blast incinerated the Romulan vessel in just seconds, leaving only the smallest remnants behind.
Silence descended on the Rio Grande like a shroud. So many lives had been lost that day that Ro already felt shocked to the core by it all. With the apparent self-destruction of the Romulan starship, a numbness began to set in.
A piece of debris floated past the viewports, whether from Deep Space 9 or the Romulan warbird, Ro could not tell. The wreckage snapped her from her daze, reminding her that prior to the loss of DS9, she had ordered all the emergency bulkheads on the station closed. That meant that if large enough sections had survived the destruction of the station, then people might still be alive within them.
“Jeff, open a comm channel to the Defiant,” Ro said. “I want to talk to Wheeler.” They needed to check on Robinson and the Tzenkethi marauder, but after that, they would have to mount rescue efforts, trawling through the debris field in search of survivors.
As long as the day had already been, Ro knew that it would be longer still before she and her crew could rest.
As the tapering end of the Tzenkethi marauder bore down on Robinson, Lieutenant Commander Uteln reached for the firing touchpad, even before Commander Rogeiro issued the order for phasers. Over the sound of the ship’s impulse engines thrown into full reverse, a tremendous din filled the bridge. The ship jolted severely, in a way that the security chief had never before experienced. On the main viewscreen, through the white haze of the Tzenkethi tractor beam, he saw debris flying away from the point of impact, from where the tail portion of the marauder had plowed into Robinson’s saucer section.
Uteln’s hand came down on the firing control, and a phaser blast flashed outward at point-blank range. The beam caused a surface explosion on contact, and the Tzenketh
i tractor beam immediately ceased. Uteln glanced at the hull integrity indicators on his tactical console and saw alarms everywhere, Robinson breached in many sections, on a number of decks, throughout the forward center of the primary hull. Emergency force fields struggled to contain the massive damage and protect the crew from the vacuum of space, but the security chief knew that they would fail; too many areas had been affected, and the grid had been compromised in too many locations. He quickly brought the fleshy side of his hand down on the pad that secured emergency bulkheads in place. He watched as indicator after indicator turned green, realizing that those that stayed red likely signified portions of decking that no longer existed—at least not as an intact part of Robinson. Though the emergency bulkheads that remained would protect the rest of the ship and crew, Uteln knew that they could do nothing for those who’d been in the path of the vicious Tzenkethi attack.
Peering up at the main viewer, the security chief saw more wreckage drifting through space—and then, among the pieces of misshapen metal, several bodies. As he watched the scene in horror, Robinson’s phasers penetrated the marauder’s silver hull. A moment later, the Tzenkethi ship blew up. Chunks of the fractured vessel hammered into Robinson, shaking the ship again and again, until at last the remains of the marauder had passed.
Uteln stared at the viewscreen, at what had once again become an empty starscape, but he recalled clearly seeing the bodies of some of his shipmates floating lifeless through the void. He knew that hundreds of Tzenkethi, perhaps more than a thousand, had just been lost as well, and he figured that many of their crew likely had no choice in participating in the attack on Deep Space 9. Still, Uteln found that he could muster little compassion for them.
The security chief suddenly realized that his name had been spoken, and he refocused his attention. The ship’s first officer stood in front of the command chair, peering up at him. Uteln replayed in his head what he’d just heard, which had been Commander Rogeiro asking him for a report of the ship’s status.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 3
