Obsidian Alliances

by Various

  And in all that time, as they wailed and made ready for the end, the ship did nothing. It came close to the ground, but otherwise took no retaliatory action. Slowly the realization crept through them that they were still alive and the ship hadn’t blown them to hell and gone. A silence started to creep through the air, and soon the vast crowd was waiting in wordless anticipation of what was to happen next.

  Then the air in front of them shimmered, accompanied by a shrill whining sound. Seconds later, several forms had materialized. A man—a Xenexian, like themselves—accompanied by a Romulan and a human woman. The unlikely trio stared at the Xenexians, and then the man spoke.

  “I am M’k’n’zy of Calhoun,” he said. “Son of Gr’zy, brother of D’ndai.” There were startled gasps as older Xenexians remembered him all too well, and were clearly having trouble squaring the man they were seeing now with the trembling, cowardly boy that had departed the planet so many years ago.

  “I have been to the pits of hell and back. I have seen many things. I have done many things. I have laid low our oppressors. The Danteri will trouble you no longer. They are in fear of my power. Their allies have deserted them. You are free.”

  They stood there for a moment, clearly unable to believe it.

  “You are free,” he continued. “But others are not.”

  And he spoke to them. Spoke to his people, and for the first time in his life, they listened. He spoke to them of the Terrans, of the lives they were leading of subjugation and misery. He spoke to them of all that could be accomplished by the Terrans, and by those living in a galaxy that was not being made to buckle under fear and oppression. He spoke to them of a reality that could be, and of realities that were, and how the former could be reshaped into the latter.

  The rage was still there, as strong as before, but now it was focused and harnessed, like a forest fire being transformed into the fires of a forge.

  His people took in his words, and his spirit, and his vision that involved joining with the Terran resistance that was already in place, and freeing all living beings who were currently bending under the yoke of tyranny.

  In the future, when Xenexian historians would write of it—and they would, at length—it would simply be referred to as the Day of Enlightenment.

  “I will not lie to you, my people,” Muck cried out to them, his voice almost hoarse because he had been speaking for so long. “It will be a long and dangerous endeavor. There is every possibility that all who join me in it could die. But any who do want to come with me—those who want to embark on a new frontier of greatness—can do so now, and let future generations sing of them and hail them as a band of brothers!”

  He watched and smiled as his people started lining up to join him.

  “Well done, Muck,” Soleta said softly.

  And with a sidelong glance and a small smile, he said, “Call me Mac.”

  Saturn’s Children

  Sarah Shaw

  Historian’s Note

  Saturn’s Children takes place in late 2375 (Old Calendar), beginning after the seventh-season Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” and ending concurrent with the events of the series finale, “What You Leave Behind.”

  Il a été permis de craindre que la Révolution, comme Saturne, dévorât successivement tous ses enfants.

  There is reason to fear that the Revolution may, like

  Saturn, devour each of her children one by one.

  —Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud,

  French revolutionary politician,

  at his trial, October 1793

  1

  F lung naked from Martok’s bed, Kira struck the cold stone floor on her side and curled defensively in upon herself. Sweaty, bruised, and bloody from rough treatment, she fought to ignore the rank odor of the Klingon regent’s lust; the smell clung to her, an insult heaped upon her injuries. Martok chortled, smug and malicious. She reached for her rumpled mound of clothes.

  “Leave those where they are,” he said. “Fetch me a warnog.”

  The master had spoken. Slowly, Kira tried to stand, one hand pushing against the floor while she used the other to try to cover her breasts, a tiny concession to her illusion of dignity. Martok hurled his empty metal stein at her. It struck between her shoulder blades, a heavy battering impact that forced her back onto her torn-up kneecaps.

  “I didn’t tell you to stand,” Martok taunted. “Pick up my stein and fetch my drink.”

  Careful to suppress the hatred from her eyes, she scuttled around on all fours and retrieved his stein, which had rolled beneath the bed. On hands and knees she crossed the room to the table, where the bottle of warnog stood. Grit collected between her dirty fingers and beneath her brittle, cracked nails. She had to stretch to reach the bottle without standing up. At last her fingers closed around the narrow, dark glass of the bottle’s neck. Her hands trembled as she poured a slow trickle of the pungent libation into the large iron mug, whose outer surface was intricately detailed with carvings from Klingon mythology. The only one that she recognized was Fek’lhr, the monstrous guardian of Gre’thor, in whose likeness she decided Martok had been cast.

  Kira stole a glance through the narrow gap in the window’s shutters. Outside, a sultry afternoon lay heavily upon the First City of Qo’noS. The musky heat of the hot, rainy summer day filled this sparsely furnished bedroom in Martok’s getaway abode, away from the commotion of the Great Hall and safely removed from his family’s modest estate in the mountain provinces.

  Another difficult stretch and she placed the bottle back upon the table. She had filled the stein almost to its rim, and the liquid sloshed inside it as she crawled on one hand and two knees to deliver it to Martok, who sat on the bed and leered at her, his jagged teeth revealed in a lascivious grin. Vile hatred swelled in her heart when she looked at him. Thoughts of murder, of poisons and garrotes, of sleeping draughts and him in his bed set aflame, a bonfire of Tholian silk and Klingon ego. Not a flicker of her true intentions did she dare let show in her gaze, which she had learned through painful correction to maintain in a delicate equilibrium between adoration and submission. To darken her countenance in the presence of the man who had spared her from the executioner’s art would be a grave insult, an invitation to violence, possibly even a death sentence.

  She bowed her head and with both hands offered up the drink to him who had spared her life. “My lord.”

  A rough swipe of his hand tore the stein from her grasp, and he drank half of it in one long guzzle, wet trails of warnog sliding through his whiskers, down his throat, and across his chest. Kira had thought the liquor foul-smelling before; mingled with Klingon sweat, its odor was positively disgusting.

  Her downcast face remained serene and untroubled. This is the price of my life, she reminded herself. Her escape from Regent Worf’s flagship had been made in haste, and she had found herself alone and adrift following Worf’s capture by the rebels. After what had felt like weeks, but in fact had been only four days, a Klingon cruiser had recovered her escape pod. Though the loss of Worf and his ship had been no fault of the Intendant’s, many in the Alliance had found it convenient to lay the blame at her feet. With one grand failure, she had become expendable. And if not for the perverse appetites of the new ruler, Regent Martok, she would surely have been put to death.

  Martok, however, had made other plans for Kira. The favors and services that she had bestowed upon him for the past several months had revulsed her. It was an irony of the darkest degree, she knew. For years she had used men and women with equal callousness, treated them as slaves or toys, then discarded them like soiled rags when they had ceased to be useful or amusing. It had been decades since she had played the part of the submissive, since she had been the one on the bottom. Many of her masters and mistresses of years past had harbored streaks of cruelty or sadism, but none had been so savage to her as Martok. His barbarism was not a charade, no pantomime mockery of the illusions underlying power and powerlessness. H
e was an overlord, a warrior, a brute. When he held Kira facedown on a bed, one massive hand clamped on the back of her neck as he violated her, it was not a game.

  He reached down and cupped his hand under her chin, lifted her face to look at him. “You’ve always been a strong woman, Intendant,” he said. Despite all his debasements of her, he had let her keep the honorific before her name—as if she had left office willingly. He turned her face to one side, then the other, his leathery fingers warm on her skin. “I’ve had Bajoran women before. You’re the first who didn’t weep.”

  I never do, she fumed behind placid eyes.

  “You remind me of someone,” he continued. “Another powerful woman. No one’s ever seen her cry, either.”

  She hoped that he didn’t compare her to his raptor of a wife, Sirella. Bad enough to be his concubine, she brooded. I don’t need to be thinking of his wife when he’s inside me.

  The regent took a sip of his warnog. “The one who took your place as Intendant,” he said finally. “I see the same hardness in both of you. But it’s not exactly the same. Your edge was forged in fire. Hers, I think, must have been tempered in ice.” His fingers stroked a path through her short, red hair. “I’ve always preferred fire.”

  Part of her wanted to thank him, but she knew not to speak out of turn. Among the many conditions of her bondage, one of the most strictly enforced was that she was to speak only in response to direct inquiries, and then she was to keep her answers brief, direct, and truthful.

  He withdrew his hand. “You’re impressive,” he said, his breath thick with the bitterly medicinal vapors of the warnog. “And you might yet be useful to me.” An ugly sneer. “In other ways.” As he studied her from behind his craggy, weather-worn mask of a face, she leaned back on her heels. It was slightly more comfortable than having all her weight forward on her knees, but mostly she did it to appease Martok, who enjoyed having a full frontal view of her nude torso. “At the request of the Bajoran Parliament, I’m releasing you to their custody. To be more specific, I’m turning you over to Intendant Ro.”

  The name sent a fearful shiver up Kira’s spine. One of the drawbacks of holding the intendancy was the need to always be on one’s guard for ambitious underlings. Few members of the Bajoran Parliament had fit that description so well as Ro Laren. Cold and calculating, Ro was a schemer. Worse, she was well known to be sympathetic to the Cardassians’ desire to wield greater influence over Alliance politics and strategy, and highly critical of the Klingons’ governance. Only a long campaign of deceit and treachery had enabled Kira to keep Ro at bay for as long as she had. Confined to the committees of the Parliament, there had been little Ro could do to interfere with Kira’s reign. Apparently, however, Ro had saved her political capital for a moment conducive to ascension—and hadn’t hesitated when news of Kira’s fall from grace had reached Bajor.

  Kira snapped out of her reminiscence as Martok leaned forward, wrinkled his nose at her, and sniffed loudly. “You can’t go to the new Intendant like that,” he said. “You stink like a whore.” A jerk of his wrist hurled the remaining half-stein of warnog into Kira’s face and chest. Its stench was both nauseating and bracing. The air in the room, which moments ago had felt so warm, now carried a chill as it breezed over Kira’s wet body, raising gooseflesh as it traveled past. “Guards,” he called out, and moments later the double doors opened and a pair of Klingon warriors entered. He pointed at Kira. “Take her to her new mistress.” One guard scooped up Kira’s black body suit from the floor, and the other took hold of her arms and lifted her until only the tips of her toes dragged across the floor while she was carried out.

  Watching his men haul Kira away, Martok grinned at her. “You’ve impressed me, my dear. Let us see if you can impress Ro.”

  The Cardassian patrol ship was as soft a target as Miles O’Brien had ever seen. One, maybe two, quantum torpedoes and a close strafing of the Defiant’s phasers would be more than enough to turn the rust-hued vessel into a cloud of superheated dust. Vulnerable by itself far from the main shipping lanes, it appeared all but stationary on the bridge’s main viewer, surrounded by the slow drag of warp-stretched starlight.

  A few months earlier, O’Brien would not have hesitated to order the patrol ship destroyed. It was almost certainly on the hunt for the Defiant and any other ship aligned with the rebellion against the Alliance. It was a military vessel, a perfectly valid target, and yet, O’Brien found himself wondering about the lives he would be snuffing out. Did they have families at home? Children? Was one of its crew the last member of a family line? For that matter, would destroying this one little ship really make any difference in the overall war effort? Or would he just be killing these men because he could?

  Soft computer tones and hushed voices surrounded him on the dimly lit bridge. The illumination was always reduced when the ship traveled under cloak, as if to reinforce the sense of lurking unseen in the darkness between the stars. Like its counterpart in the other universe, upon which this Defiant was based, O’Brien’s ship had been equipped with a Romulan-made cloaking device, one that Alliance ships hadn’t yet learned how to detect or penetrate.

  O’Brien had noticed that his bridge crew tended to speak in whispers when the ship was cloaked, even though it made no difference in the vacuum of space. Looking around at them while they worked, he became conscious of how young they all seemed to him. The oldest was Enrique Muniz, his operations officer, a Terran in his thirties. Combat and hardship had weathered Muniz’s boyish mien, but even after seeing the worst horrors war had to offer, some spark of youthful vigor continued to show in his eyes.

  Slightly younger than Muniz was O’Brien’s first officer, Leeta. Even though she was Bajoran, the slender but buxom redhead had committed herself to the rebellion—and not just for the sake of her ongoing romance with Ezri Tigan, a waifish, dark-haired Trill woman who served as O’Brien’s tactical officer. The youngest member of O’Brien’s crew on the Defiant, but no less dedicated, was another idealistic young Bajoran woman by the name of Sito Jaxa. The wide-eyed, twenty-something blonde piloted the powerful warship with grace and aplomb.

  Leeta was leaning over beside Muniz at the ops panel. She glanced over her shoulder at O’Brien, who noticed her stare from the corner of his eye. Her look had an accusatory quality, as if to rebuke him for not yet having ordered the attack. He looked away from her, his expression dour. She let him stew in silence for another minute before she prowled over, never shy about flaunting her feminine charms. Bending at the waist, she hovered over his right shoulder, close enough for him to smell faint traces of her perfume and feel the warmth of her breath on the back of his ear as she murmured, “What are you waiting for?”

  His reply was low and rasping. “I’ll give the order when I’m damn good and ready.”

  Apparently, she had understood from his tone of voice that she was dismissed, because she walked back to rejoin Muniz at the ops panel. Seating herself on the edge of the console next to his station, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a few strips of latinum, and handed them to Muniz. “You win,” she said loudly enough for the entire bridge to hear. “He’s lost his nerve.”

  O’Brien twisted his chair to face her. “The hell I have!”

  Leeta’s face brightened with mock surprise. “Oh, really?” Her expression darkened. “Then why haven’t we fired yet?”

  “Because I haven’t given the order yet,” was O’Brien’s sharp retort. “And before you say another bloody word, I don’t have to explain myself to you, or anyone else. I’m the captain of this ship and the leader of the rebellion, and I won’t be second-guessed…. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Like a petulant adolescent, Leeta rolled her eyes and heaved a weary sigh. “Whatever you say.” For a moment, O’Brien wished that he could order her thrown in the brig, but there was some doubt in his mind whether the rest of the crew would obey such an order. The chain of command in the rebellion was far from strictly enforced—a fact that h
ad become an ongoing source of conflict within the ranks and concern among the leadership.

  Everyone was watching him as he swiveled his chair to face forward once again, a slow turn in which he kept his challenging glare fixed upon Leeta until the last possible moment. Then he was looking once more at the Cardassian patrol ship, cruising alone through the cold void, far from home, posing no imminent threat to the Defiant. If he chose not to attack, the crew would see him as weak and begin to turn against him; he would be sowing the seeds of mutiny on his own ship. Destroying the enemy vessel was the only reasonable course of action.

  He wondered what Keiko would say. She’d call it a waste of munitions, he thought. An ambush for no good reason. A battle that doesn’t need to be fought. And she might be right…. Or she might not.

  Resigning himself to the inevitable, he gave the order, without once taking his attention off the ship pictured on the forward viewscreen. “Leeta,” he said. When he had her undivided attention, he continued, “Destroy that ship.”

  In the space of a breath Leeta transformed into a soldier, snapping orders quickly around the bridge, executing the protocol exactly as O’Brien had trained her to do. “Quique, get ready to drop the cloak. Ezri, stand by on torpedoes for a snap-shot. Sito, take us to z-plus-eighty meters, nudge our nose down to give Ezri a better shot at their engines.”

  Overlapping calls of “Ready” came back to Leeta in reply. She turned smartly on her heel to watch the action on the main viewer. “Drop the cloak!” A hum of power coursed through the bridge as the lights brightened. “Fire!”