by Peter David
Begging did not come naturally to Kira, but she tried. “Please, General,” she said. “There’s a clear pattern, a connection. If I’m right, the rebellion is assembling a new stronghold, and possibly more. We have to—”
He yanked the data padd back from her grasp and poked at the information on its screen as he debunked it. “Missing deuterium freighter. You say hijacked by rebels; I say stolen by Orion privateers.” Each jab of his index finger left a smear of skin oil on the padd’s surface. “Antimatter tanker destroyed in transit. You say it was a fake accident to cover a rebel plot. I say it was bad maintenance…. Small arms go missing. You say rebel conspiracy; I say arms dealers. Stolen kelbonite—” He paused, seemed to reconsider. “That one is troubling, but it’s hardly evidence of a major war effort by the rebels.” Duras flung the padd away, across the bridge. It clattered across the deck and disappeared through a gap in the bulkhead. “Stop wasting my time, woman.” He turned his back on her.
It was an insult for which, just a few short months ago, she could have had him stripped bare and whipped half to death. For a fleeting moment, her old temper almost flared. Her voice swelled in her chest, gathered strength, threatened to burst forth in its loudest, most imperious measure—
She caught herself. The privilege of pique was no longer hers. Raising her voice to a Klingon general would gain her, at best, hours of agonizing torture; if Duras was in a foul mood, he could easily have her killed for insubordination. She was no longer a person of influence; she was a nobody, and everyone on this ship knew it.
Reminded of her vulnerability she withdrew from the bridge without saying another word. She kept her eyes downcast, watching the gray-green deck pass under her feet as she moved in timid steps through the corridors of the Negh’Var. Until now she had not thought about all the ramifications of her servitude to Ro aboard this ship. To the Klingons, she was barely a person. One word spoken out of turn, one glance at the wrong person in the wrong context, and I might end up with a d’k tahg in my back, she realized. Suddenly, every Klingon crew member she passed in the corridors seemed threatening. No doubt, some of them had, at one time or another, been the victims of her wrath when she had reigned as the Intendant. They would be alert for any excuse to take their revenge.
The corridor narrowed as she neared the servants’ quarters. Warm and humid air grew thicker with pungent food smells and the musk of perspiration. Inside, it was so heavy as to be almost unbreathable. A low chatter of idle conversations echoed through the ventilation grates from adjacent compartments. Most of the other residents of Kira’s berth were here, whiling away their off-duty hours behind the flimsy curtains that gave their cramped bunk spaces the ambience of coffins. As she climbed to her rack on the top of the rearmost left row of bunks, she heard the Bolian slave on the bottom bunk chewing and swallowing; because his Klingon mistress never fed him, he was forced to steal food from the mess hall and eat in secrecy. Occupying the bunk directly above his was a Terran slave who spent her nights trying to muffle her sobs with her pillow. The woman would weep until the other slaves, desperate for rest, would beat her unconscious so they could sleep. From the bunk directly below Kira’s came a regular cadence of heavy breathing and grunted exertions. She tried not to look, but as she climbed past she glanced inside. Looking back at her with a miserable expression was a young, lean-looking Trill man with blond hair. He lay on his stomach and covered his mouth with the end of his blanket, while a larger, far more muscular Terran man lay on top of him.
At the top, Kira rolled into her own bunk and pulled the curtain closed behind her. The sounds and smells and thrumming vibrations of the Klingon warship surrounded her, pressed in on her. She hated this place, this life. This is as good as it’s going to get for me on this ship, she knew. There was no one of higher rank than Intendant Ro for Kira to aspire to serve. Even if one of the lower-ranking officers was willing to take her on as a slave, and perhaps eventually as a paid domestic servant, Kira had no reason to think that Ro would allow her to transfer. No, she’s having too much fun tormenting me. She won’t let me advance, she won’t let me transfer. All she wants me to do is die as her slave.
That wasn’t an outcome that Kira was prepared to accept. There has to be a way, she told herself. Some other way out from under her thumb. There seemed to be no one to whom she could appeal for help. Regent Martok had intentionally set her up to fail, so he was unlikely to help her now. General Duras was obviously not going to risk incurring Ro’s wrath by supporting a slave. And she knew there was no point in trying to solicit aid from the Cardassians. Thanks to some skills that she had acquired during her initial rise to power years ago, she had been able to access a number of encrypted transmissions to and from the Negh’Var. Now that she knew for a fact that Ro and Dukat were lovers as well as political allies, the battle lines seemed clearly drawn.
No point trying to build alliances with the enlisted crew, she reasoned. They don’t have enough clout. Most of the officers are with Duras; they won’t turn. She shook her head. Seeking an ally among the Negh’Var’s crew would be a waste of time. If she, a slave, so much as hinted to one of the crew that she harbored mutinous intent, she would be executed on the spot. The other slaves would be more likely to betray her than support her, both to improve their own standing with their masters and to avoid being caught in any cross-fire. No, if she was going to cultivate an ally to help her break free of Ro’s control, it would have to be someone not on the Negh’Var.
Working from memory, she found herself at a loss to think of even one person on Bajor who would cross Ro in order to help her. Too many burned bridges there, she thought with regret. The most reliable ally she’d ever had, Regent Worf, had openly despised her. He was now somewhere light-years away, in the custody of the Terran rebels. As she reflected on the few people she had ever trusted, however conditionally, she realized that all of them had disappointed her. Benjamin, Smiley, Antos, Ezri, even her own alternate-universe duplicate—they, and many others, had all betrayed her.
Energetic bumping from below shook her rack. She thumped her fist against the bulkhead, the universal semaphore for demanding silence. A moment later the thuds against her bunk stopped, but the muffled groans and huffs of labored breath grew deeper. Kira forced herself not to think about what she was hearing and just let it fade into the background, along with the rhythmic pulsing of the ship’s engines. It worked for a few minutes, then the Terran woman started crying again. Kira sighed. Let the beatings commence.
Her thoughts turned again to Regent Worf. Though the rebels had taken him to Terok Nor after his capture, she’d heard rumors while she was on Qo’noS that he had been moved to a different site in order to reduce the likelihood of an attack on the station. Finding him would be next to impossible, but she wondered if there might yet be some political gain to be had from her close association with him.
Recalling some of her conversations with him, a new strategy occurred to her. She took her portable data-retrieval device from a pocket on the leg of her dingy gray jumpsuit. It had taken considerable effort to bypass the Negh’Var’s security lockouts, but she had succeeded in creating a secure remote-access channel for herself. It would enable her to conduct research and even send short encrypted text messages through the ship’s communications relay without their being traced back to her or her workstation.
Moments later she patched in to the Klingons’ data network. Within seconds she found what she was looking for … and she smiled. There you are, she gloated.
For now, she would weather Ro’s abuse and play the part of an obedient slave … but that was about to change.
4
Look sharp,” O’Brien said. “Our timing has to be perfect.”
None of the Defiant’s bridge crew responded. They were all too focused on their work, hunkered down in the darkness that filled the bridge. The lighting was normally subdued when the ship was cloaked, but for this operation its interiors were almost pitch-dark. Nonessential displ
ays and interfaces had been powered down and noncritical systems taken offline. As an added precaution, they had dropped from warp speed back to sublight while they were still beyond the edge of the Cuellar system. From there they had navigated at one-tenth impulse speed to within a few million kilometers of the target, at which point they’d cut the power and drifted in. Thrusters had been fired in short spurts to make occasional course corrections.
On the main viewer, a Cardassian sensor station loomed large. It was a manned facility equipped with the most advanced signals-intelligence hardware that the Alliance possessed. Gray and organically twisted, it resembled a giant crustacean. The Cardassian name for the station was Vareth Dar, but the rebellion had nicknamed it the Watchtower because it was able to monitor ship movements and encrypted signal traffic for nearly forty light-years in every direction; its range extended from the Betreka Nebula to Terok Nor. As long as the Watchtower remained in service, there was little hope of the rebellion mounting a successful sneak attack against the Alliance anywhere within striking distance of Terok Nor.
O’Brien’s orders were simple: destroy Vareth Dar. Achieving that objective posed a number of significant challenges. Even cloaked, the Defiant was not perfectly hidden. At close range, it would trigger numerous finely tuned sensors in the Watchtower’s array. The station wasn’t blind, nor was it defenseless. Its shields were formidable, strong enough to block the Defiant’s strongest barrage, and its weapons array was more than capable of pulverizing the ship if it scored a direct hit. Countless simulations had convinced O’Brien that a direct assault by the Defiant would be futile.
A coordinated attack by the Defiant and the Capital Gain, however, if executed properly, might have a chance.
“Sito,” O’Brien said. “Stand by on thrusters. Nice and slow, now.” The young woman entered the commands on the flight control interface and nudged the Defiant a few dozen meters closer to the Watchtower. O’Brien glanced right, toward the tactical console. “Tigan, you ready?”
“Yeah,” said Ezri, her eyes fixed on her companel display, on which was superimposed a pair of manual-targeting crosshairs. Without the benefit of computer-assisted tactical systems, Ezri would have to guide the ship’s phasers and torpedoes by eye and hand. Targeting scanners were a luxury the Defiant crew could not afford this close to Vareth Dar; one sweep would give away their presence instantly.
“Muniz,” O’Brien said. “Anything on comms?”
“Nada,” Muniz replied. “All quiet.”
O’Brien watched the numbers tick away on the countdown, which was displayed in the lower left corner of the main viewscreen. “Thirty seconds, everyone. Stand ready.”
Tense expressions surrounded O’Brien. Leeta stood tall beside him, her jaw set. In front of him, Sito hunched over her flight controls, ready to react on a moment’s notice. Muniz sat with his eyes closed, tuning out everything except the passively intercepted signal traffic coming and going from the target. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of Ezri’s face as she watched the target enter her crosshairs.
Fifteen seconds.
When the countdown reached zero—assuming Zek and his crew were on time—the Defiant’s crew would have only seconds to react. As soon as the Capital Gain decloaked, it would be detected by the crew on Vareth Dar, who would sound the call to battle stations. Thanks to a number of previous sorties the Defiant had flown past the station, O’Brien and his crew had compiled enough data to predict that Vareth Dar would raise its shields within four seconds of spotting an enemy vessel.
The final moments counted down. Three. Two. One.
Like clockwork, as the timer reached zero, the Capital Gain decloaked on the far side of Vareth Dar and accelerated to an attack posture. O’Brien gripped the arms of his chair. “Full thrusters!” Sito punched in the command and the Defiant shot forward to within point-blank range of the station. Counting the seconds in his head, O’Brien hoped that Zek’s people remembered to fire at precisely—
“Capital Gain’s firing!” shouted Leeta. “The station’s raising shields and powering weapons!” Blasts of pulsed phaser energy from the Capital Gain crackled against the station’s invisible deflector shield. A volley of torpedoes flared against the shield bubble above the station’s command center—and above the still-cloaked Defiant, which had maneuvered inside the station’s shield perimeter before its defenses had activated.
Sito cut in, “We’re in position!”
“Target set,” Ezri called out, as more blasts from the Capital Gain flashed across the station’s shields.
“Drop the cloak and raise shields,” O’Brien commanded. One second later the bridge brightened as the cloak deactivated and all the bridge consoles surged to life. O’Brien sprang from his chair and pumped his fist. “Fire!”
Furious pulses of bright-orange phaser energy leaped from the front of the Defiant and tore through Vareth Dar’s primary deflector shield emitters, a three-panel system much like the one in use at Terok Nor. Sito piloted the Defiant in a tight, fast circle around the station’s core, giving Ezri a clear shot at each emitter’s support structure. The last shield emitter disintegrated as the station’s first retaliatory shots hammered the Defiant’s shields.
“Return fire,” O’Brien said. “Target the command center.” Ezri’s shots became more accurate and more devastating as the Defiant’s targeting computer re-engaged. In just a few shots she obliterated the station’s operations deck and communications tower. “Nice shooting,” O’Brien said as more disruptor blasts from the station slammed against the Defiant’s shields.
“The Capital Gain is targeting the station’s fusion core,” Muniz reported.
“Sito, break off,” O’Brien said. “Evasive, full impulse. Tigan, covering fire, aft torpedoes.”
Engine noise grew louder and was punctuated by the thrumming echoes of torpedoes being released and the nerve-rattling concussions of enemy fire. Then a blinding eruption of white light filled the main viewer. Ezri swiveled her chair to face O’Brien, flashing him a wicked grin. “We did it! The Watchtower’s gone!”
Whoops and triumphal shouts filled the bridge. O’Brien heard the engineers cheering over the intraship comm. Leeta embraced Ezri, and they clutched each other with relief and exhilaration. Though O’Brien had tried to discourage them from bringing their personal relationship with them onto the bridge, he decided that this was a special circumstance, one deserving of a slight relaxing of the rules. He made the rounds of the bridge, shook Muniz’s hand, and gave Sito a fatherly pat on the back before he tousled her hair. “Well done, everyone,” he said over the laughing and conversations. “When we get back to the station, the first round’s on me. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, General,” Leeta said, and in quick succession the rest of the bridge crew did likewise, overlapping each other in their gratitude. O’Brien basked in the warmth and glory of the moment. This is what it feels like to be part of a team. He smiled. Part of a family.
A shrill tone on the communications console pulled Muniz away from the impromptu celebration. He checked the display, then looked at O’Brien. “It’s General Zek,” he said. “He’s hailing us.”
Adopting a more serious mien, O’Brien moved back toward his chair. “Stations, everyone.” He waited until his crew had settled back into their chairs and resumed a more professional bearing. With a nod to Muniz, he said, “On-screen.”
The starfield on the main viewscreen was replaced by the wrinkled visage of Zek, whose nasal whine O’Brien found just as grating over a comm as he did in person. “Nice work, O’Brien,” he said. “Nice to see you’ve still got it where it counts.”
“My compliments to you and your crew, as well, General,” O’Brien said. “It was a fine plan.”
Zek seemed unable to smile without squinting. “Thank you. Now we can move on to phase two, and—”
“Phase two?” O’Brien didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t recall there being a phase two in this plan.”
>
The Ferengi responded with a shrug, then said, “A last-second addition. Don’t worry, it’s nothing major.”
O’Brien made no effort to conceal his suspicion. “Care to be a bit more specific?”
“I’m sending you some coordinates on the fourth planet,” Zek said, nodding to one of his crewmen on the Capital Gain. “As long as we’re here, we might as well destroy both targets. After all, as we Ferengi like to say, ‘Never take one when you can get two for the same price.’”
The data from the Capital Gain appeared on a monitor above Ezri’s station. She studied it for a few seconds, then looked at O’Brien. “Sir,” she said. “I think you should see this.”
O’Brien got out of his chair and stepped behind Ezri. On her overhead monitor was an orbital scan of what appeared to be a Cardassian civilian settlement on Cuellar IV. As far as he could tell, there were no military facilities attached to the colony, no ground-based spaceport infrastructure with the ability to support military vessels of any kind. Neither visual scans nor energy profiles suggested any kind of weapons emplacements. The colony didn’t even have any heavy industry to speak of—no mining, no refining, no manufacturing. It appeared to be a primarily agricultural community. He turned to face Zek. “I don’t understand. Where’s the target?”
Flabbergasted, Zek shot back, “What’re you talking about? Are you blind? The colony’s the target!”
“They’re not armed,” O’Brien protested. “They don’t have any military assets, they’re just farmers.”
Zek retorted, “So? So what? They’re Cardassians! They’re the enemy. This is my mission, I’m giving the orders, and I’m telling you to target that colony and fire, on my mark!”
