Star Trek

by Andy Mangels

  His captor’s hand came into the light and set a small golden object down on the table, well out of his reach. Hovath saw a pinpoint glint of green, and knew what it was: the Paghvaram.

  “What if I were to suggest,” she said softly, “that you may have had the key all along?”

  Hovath felt as if his chest would explode. He buried his head in his arms and sobbed. “Please . . . let my wife go.”

  “You disappoint me, Hovath. Your mind is so thirsty, yet you won’t drink, even when the well of knowledge is so close.”

  “It was presumption,” he moaned. “Vanity. Arrogance. I thought the wormhole was an invitation to further knowledge, but I see now that it was instead a test of faith. And I failed it. My quest to comprehend the Temple doomed my people, and damned me.”

  “Hovath, how can you believe such a thing?” the woman asked, her voice tinged with kindness, with sympathy. “The Prophets haven’t punished you. They’ve rewarded your vision, your willingness to look beyond your little village and peer into the true structure of the universe. You’ve been unshackled, don’t you see? The death of the village is not a condemnation of your choice, but an affirmation, a sign from Them that you are on the verge of something new and wonderful.”

  “You are twisting my faith to suit your ends,” Hovath said. “To justify mass murder.”

  “Am I?” His captor slid the padd back to him. “Did you not go down this path in pursuit of a truth that you hoped would transcend the one you knew? Did you never even once stop to consider that what you learned would be incompatible with what you believed before? That your discoveries would transform your life? What clearer sign could the Prophets send that you have fulfilled your quest?”

  “The death of nearly everyone I love is not a sign from the Prophets. You know nothing of my faith.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “Yes!”

  Then something altogether unexpected happened. His captor stood up and stepped around the table, moving into the light. Hovath saw her face for the first time, and his world unraveled completely.

  “I ask again,” she said, “are you certain?”

  How? his mind screamed. How is this possible?

  Aloud he whispered, “Why would you do this?”

  She came closer, finally sitting on the edge of the table next to where he sat. “Because, like you, I thirst for understanding. I burn to see what only the Prophets can reveal.”

  Try as he might, Hovath could not turn his eyes away from her. She stared down at him, as if waiting for an answer . . . .

  The room shook. A low boom reverberated through the deck. There was a chime from the console beneath the screen that showed Iniri. The Nausicaan detached an audio receiver from the panel and pressed it to his ear. “Attacked,” the underling reported. “Defiant.”

  Hovath’s heart surged with hope.

  “How timely. Both of you report to the bridge,” she told her men. “I’ll be there shortly . . . after I secure our new friend.”

  Iniri vanished from the screen. The two underlings left. His captor gathered up the padd and the Paghvaram, secured them in an inner pocket of her jacket, then drew out a hand weapon of some kind and pressed it to the side of his head. The rising hum of its charge pierced his ear. Grabbing his arm with her free hand, she pulled him to his feet as the ship shook again.

  Hovath didn’t resist. He believed that, one way or another, his nightmare was about to end.

  Then he saw the smile on his captor’s face, and his hope died. “Now comes the fun part,” she said.

  17

  Kira

  “Stay with them, helm,” Kira ordered. “Tactical, I want those shields down!”

  “Pulse phasers firing,” Bowers said behind her. “Direct hit.”

  Five hours after departing DS9, moving at warp eight and against all odds, the Defiant had located her quarry, the Besinian ship, just a few light-years shy of the Badlands. Kira was determined not to let their good fortune be wasted. Nearly three hundred innocent people were dead because of this ship, and justice was going to be exacted for that crime, one way or another.

  Once the freighter had showed up on long-range sensors, Kira ordered battle stations and commenced an attack plan she’d used successfully against Cardassian slave transports more than once during the Occupation—tactics designed to disable, not destroy. Doing it from the Defiant’s command chair wasn’t all that different from her experiences on the bridge of a Bajoran assault ship, she reflected: she still needed to remind herself to pull her punches when the circumstances required it. This was one of those times.

  Or so she thought.

  “Their shields are still holding,” Bowers reported, the disbelief in his voice echoing Kira’s own.

  “I believe I know why,” Shar said from sciences. “Their shield harmonics are Dominion.”

  “Dominion?” Bowers said.

  Kira shook her head as she stared at the evading ship on the viewscreen. “They salvaged a Dominion shield generator from somewhere. But why didn’t anyone detect that when they came to Bajor?”

  “They may have a dual generator system in place,” Shar postulated. “A more conventional one in order to appear inconspicuous, and another . . .”

  “Another to deal with us,” Kira finished.

  “Sir,” Bowers announced, “they’re charging weapons—”

  “Evasive!”

  At the helm, Tenmei’s nimble fingers danced across her console. Defiant pitched to starboard and climbed, a yellow beam from the alien vessel tracking after her. No sooner did she escape one enemy cone of fire, however, than she moved into another and rocked against the impact of a second beam. The Besinian ship increased speed and pulled away.

  “Direct hit to our starboard nacelle casing,” Bowers reported. “Torpedo launchers are off line. They’re using spiral-wave disruptors.”

  Dominion shields and Cardassian weapons, Kira noted. Are they really just opportunists, or are they sending a message?

  “They’re making a run for plasma storms,” Shar warned.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Kira said. “Close the distance, Tenmei. Shar, triangulate on the probable location of their shield generator and feed the coordinates to tactical.” She spoke over her shoulder. “Make this one count, Sam.”

  “Aye, sir,” Bowers said. Minutes ticked by as the Defiant reacquired its target and surged after it. “Coordinates received,” Sam announced at last. “Pulse phasers locked.”

  “Fire,” Kira said.

  On the viewscreen, phaser bolts bridged the void between the Defiant and the Besinian ship. An elliptical bubble of force surrounding the freighter became visible against the bombardment—and held.

  “Again,” Kira ordered. “Fire.”

  Once more, the Defiant’s phasers hit their mark. Their target’s shield envelope flared momentarily . . . then gave way as the pulse bolts ripped across the upper hull of the freighter.

  “Their shields are down,” Shar reported. “Minor damage to their hull . . . . I believe we also took out their second generator.”

  “Target their port nacelle wing,” Kira said. “Go easy this time, Mr. Bowers. I just want to knock them out of warp.”

  “Aye, sir, phasers firing . . . .” Another flash of orange exploded across one side of the alien ship, and the vessel abruptly vanished from the viewscreen.

  “They’ve dropped out of warp,” Tenmei confirmed. “We’ve overshot them.”

  Kira let out a long breath and leaned back in her seat. “Bring us about and switch to impulse,” she said. “Shar, what’s their condition?”

  “Dead in space,” Shar said, translating the numerical data scrolling up his console display. “They’re on emergency power. Their weapons systems appear to be offline.”

  “Life signs?”

  “Twelve. Five of them are concentrated in the bridge, the others are in or around engineering. There seems to be—” Shar stopped, his antennae angling for
ward. He began tapping his console.

  “Ensign?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. For a moment I thought there was a slight power spike underneath the ship. It’s gone now.”

  “Sam?”

  Bowers shook his head. “I can’t confirm it. They’ve got plasma venting from at least eight different sources all over the ship. The spike could easily have been a ruptured EPS conduit.”

  “Keep the shields up,” she told him, “and Lieutenant, if they so much as twitch . . . be sure to remind them why they shouldn’t.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Kira stood up and faced the main viewer, on which the disabled freighter could now be seen again, becoming larger as the Defiant approached. “Open a channel.”

  “Channel open.”

  “This is Captain Kira Nerys of the U.S.S. Defiant, representing the United Federation of Planets. You’re ordered to surrender and prepare to be boarded.”

  She was answered with a burst of static, but there seemed to be a voice behind it. “Can you clean that up?” she asked Bowers.

  “No,” he answered after a moment. “I’m showing that their comm system is mostly slag.”

  “I thought we didn’t hit them that hard.”

  “Dominion shield generator or no, it’s still a nonmilitary courier, Captain. Overloading the shields and then knocking out the warp drive could have easily had an effect on some of their other systems.”

  “Are they receiving us?”

  “They seem to be.”

  “All right, send this: By order of the Federation, all occupants of your ship are to be detained for questioning in the matter of more than two hundred and seventy deaths on the planet Bajor. You’re to offer no resistance. We have your vessel targeted. Stand by.” Kira made a cutting motion across her throat with her thumb, and Bowers closed the channel.

  “We’ll do this in two teams,” she told him. “Have Gordimer take three security people to secure the bridge. DeJesus and Nog will go with me to secure engineering and assess the warp engines. I’ll take Doctor Tarses, too, in case there are injuries. Have them all meet me in the transporter bay in two minutes. You have the bridge, Lieutenant.” Kira started for the exit.

  “Sir,” Bowers said. “Request permission to lead the team to engineering.”

  Kira stopped and looked at him. “You know I can’t grant that request, Sam. Not this time.” She nodded toward the command chair. “You keep her warm until I get back.”

  Bowers frowned, clearly unhappy with her decision. “May I respectfully remind the captain that Starfleet regulations call for the ship’s commanding officer to remain on board, not to lead away missions.”

  Kira smiled at him. She knew what he was trying to do, and appreciated it, so she kept her tone light as she strode out of the bridge. “Sorry, Mr. Bowers, I guess I haven’t gotten to that part in the manual yet.”

  * * *

  As the Besinian ship materialized around her, Kira swept her drawn phaser around the dim corridor into which Transporter Chief Chao had deposited Team One. Kira trusted her people to cover her back, but as team leader, she was their first line of defense against anything in front, and she was determined that none of the killers on this ship would take any more lives.

  Fortunately, sensor reads of their beam-in point had proven true: the corridor outside the engine room was quiet. It wasn’t until Kira looked at the deck that she saw why.

  At her feet lay a dead man.

  He was an Arkenite: the distinctive swept-back skull, domed forehead, and large, elegantly shaped ears were unmistakable.

  Tarses bent to one knee, held his tricorder over the corpse for a few seconds, and delivered his verdict. “Shot by a phaser during the last thirty minutes,” he told Kira, pointing out the dark bloodless burn on the back of the head, which was visible even in the ship’s dim purple emergency lighting: the telltale sign of an energy weapon fired at point-blank range.

  “Sir, another one,” DeJesus said, crouching next to a prone Ktarian male. Both bodies, Kira noted, wore drab paramilitary clothing. Tarses moved to scan the second corpse, and reported the same findings.

  What the hell—? Kira thought. She’d seen enough brutality in her life to recognize executions when she saw them. But if Tarses was right, both of these men had been killed while the Defiant was chasing down this ship. Which meant . . . what?

  She tapped her combadge. “Kira to Defiant.”

  “Bowers here, Captain. Is everything all right?”

  “We’re in, Lieutenant. But we’ve come across a couple of bodies, very recently killed by weapons fire. Tell Team Two they can beam to their target site, but to proceed with caution.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Kira out.” She gestured with her phaser toward an elliptical door at one end of the corridor. “According to Chao, that should be engineering. Stay alert. I don’t want any mistakes.”

  The door, not unexpectedly, refused to open. Nog unsealed an access panel and went to work on the locking mechanism, DeJesus covering him while he applied the skills developed during his misspent youth together with what he’d learned under the tutelage of of Chief O’Brien over the last few years. Kira and Tarses watched and waited on the other side of the doorframe, backs against the corridor wall, phasers at the ready.

  After a few moments, Nog looked up at Kira and nodded once. Kira nodded back, and her chief engineer touched a final contact on the exposed circuitry before hitting the deck. The thick engine-room door slid open, but there was only silence beyond. No voices, no weapons fire. DeJesus quickly peered inside and then withdrew her head. Finding nothing, she swung her entire body around and entered the room, her phaser pointing the way.

  After several seconds, Kira heard DeJesus call out “Clear!” and the rest of Team One crossed the threshold, spreading out as they did so. Kira saw at once why they had encountered no resistance. Four more dead bodies littered the deck: two Tellarite females, a male human, and a male Romulan, all fallen where they’d been shot, as Tarses quickly confirmed, by phaser fire. The last two had been shot in the back; the others bore chest wounds, and still held hand weapons of their own, as if they were preparing to fight back against whoever had felled their shipmates. Like those out in the corridor, they were dressed in paramilitary garb of no discernible affiliation: mercenaries. Judging from the absence of phaser burns anywhere else in the room, Kira concluded they’d never had a chance to return fire. Whoever did this had gotten the drop on all of them.

  The warp core stood silent and dark.

  “Any life signs?” Kira asked Tarses.

  “Just us,” the doctor answered, his small eyes and straight, slightly upswept eyebrows enhancing the scowl he wore as he reported his findings. “Wait. I’m picking up something in that direction,” he amended, pointing to starboard. “It’s Bajoran.”

  “Maybe it’s the one who killed the crew?” Nog said. “A survivor taken from the village, getting their revenge?”

  Kira was reluctant to draw any conclusions yet, though she had to admit Nog’s guess seemed not an unlikely possibility.

  “Dr. Tarses and I will check it out,” she decided. “Ensign DeJesus, you’ll stay to assist Lieutenant Nog while he assesses the ship’s engines. Contact me if there’s anything new to report. Which way, Doctor?”

  Tarses indicated a short corridor leading out of main engineering and into an adjacent subsection, dimly lit like the rest of the ship in that odd purple lighting. The doctor’s tricorder, Kira realized, was leading them toward an airlock. Tarses peered through a small triangular window in the inner hatch.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  Kira didn’t stop to ask him what he saw. She made several attempts to open the inner portal using the keypad in the wall next to it before she finally stepped back and fired her phaser at the mechanism. Applying her full strength on a stubborn manual lever below the keypad allowed her to crank the hatch ajar, enough that Tarses could fit fingers into the edge
and pull it open the rest of the way.

  The Bajoran was a young woman who could not have been older than twenty-five, huddled in a corner with her knees up, her face buried behind them. It was immediately apparent that she wasn’t the killer of the ship’s crew. She’d been sealed in the airlock from the corridor, and from the looks of her, she’d been tortured: clothing torn, burns on her exposed skin, hair matted with blood from a head injury. Her earlobe was torn where her earring had been partly ripped free, the bloody ornament hanging by one intact clasp. Her entire body was trembling. She had no other reaction as the door of her prison opened.

  “We’re here to help you,” Tarses said as he approached. She flinched at the sound of his voice, so he lowered it to a whisper as he slowly raised his tricorder to scan her. “I’m a doctor. My name is Simon. Can you tell me your name?”

  The woman made a slurring noise and pushed her way to her feet, back against the outer portal. She swung her arms as if to warn Tarses away.

  Drugged? Kira wondered. Or simply traumatized? Maybe it was both.

  “It’s okay,” Tarses said. “We’re going to take you out of here.”

  Tarses’s quiet assurances only spurred the woman to resist even more; she seemed to be trying to push her way through the airlock, making desperate, guttural noises and intermittently clawing at the air in the doctor’s direction.

  Kira came into the airlock and approached the young woman. “Easy, easy,” she said softly. “You’re safe. We’re not going to let anything else happen to you, I promise. My name’s Nerys. Kira Nerys.”

  The woman’s reaction was immediate: she began screaming. She covered her head with her arms and turned away, beating her fists against the outer portal, desperate for escape.

  Tarses took advantage of the opportunity she presented in turning her back to them and moved in, hypospray in hand. He pressed it to the side of her neck, and she let out one more piercing scream before dropping into unconsciousness.