Star Trek: 24th Century Crossover - 018 - Section 31 - Disavowed

by David Mack

  Bashir drew his phaser. Moving with slow care, he lay down on his back and stretched his arms behind his head. He drew a deep breath, then softly exhaled to steady his aim. In the pause between heartbeats, he pressed the firing stud.

  A single full-power blast struck one of the Breen behind him in the groin. The Spetzkar he’d hit doubled over and fell to the deck—and the other three opened fire, all of them aiming high as they shot blind around the bend. Crazy ricochets careened down the narrow passage and caromed off the insulated bulkhead panels. Stray shots grazed Bashir’s arms and legs, but most of them slammed into the other Breen, who presented the broadest targets.

  Two seconds after it had started, the crossfire ended.

  Searing pain underscored Bashir’s every movement. His stealth suit flickered for a second, and then it stuttered out, leaving him visible and exposed. So much for the advantage.

  He struggled to his feet and tapped the transceiver behind his ear. “Sarina, do you copy?” No response came. “Sarina, what’s your status?” Again, his message went unanswered.

  She could be in trouble. He pushed that thought away. Of course she was in danger. They both were. The dilemma he faced was what to do next. His assignment was done. The mission plan called for him to fall back to the exfiltration point—but his heart rebelled at the notion of leaving Sarina behind. If she was cut off, she might need his help.

  He looked down at his damaged stealth suit. How much help can I be like this? He considered stealing a suit of armor from one of the dead Breen, but then he imagined himself being gunned down by Sarina in a case of mistaken identity, and he ruled it out.

  On legs that alternated between jolts of pain and feeling half numb with shock, Bashir limped back to the hatchway through which he’d entered the jaunt drive’s ring. His limbs were stiff and burning with fresh pain as he climbed back out into the corridor.

  The smart choice, he knew, would be to head aft, back to their beam-in site, which had also been set as their extraction point. Instead, he hobbled forward, toward the turbolifts.

  He was going to leave this ship with Sarina at his side . . . or not at all.

  * * *

  It wasn’t a perfect plan, but Sarina didn’t have time for perfection.

  She stood at the same console she had used to ramp up the core’s Cochrane distortion. It was just outside any of the commandos’ sight lines. As long as she didn’t attract their notice by making too much noise, they were unlikely to abandon their concealed positions. At least, that was Sarina’s hope. She needed them to stay still for just a few more seconds—just until the site-to-site transport sequence engaged.

  The mellifluous drone of the transporter beam filled the core compartment, and on the other side of the core, above and below her position on the middle level, a golden radiance flared and then abated in tandem with the wash of white noise.

  Accessing a transporter remotely had been easy. Targeting the Breen inside the core compartment through the Cochrane distortion had been hard. Making the transporter start the dematerialization sequence had entailed overriding several safety warnings.

  Sarina had taken the liberty of dispersing the Breen commandos’ scrambled patterns into space. Compared to the gruesome agonies that would have awaited them on the other side of a rematerialization sequence, it had seemed to her like the merciful choice.

  Time to move now. She pried open the maintenance panel on the underside of the companel. The main bus was arranged exactly as Barclay had shown her in his hurried briefing minutes earlier. Following his instructions, she found the master control chip inside the panel, pulled it out, and substituted the isolinear chip Saavik had given her.

  As soon as it snapped into place, the companel’s display became a frantic hash of activity happening at the speed of faster-than-light nanoprocessors. Saavik had been deliberately vague about what the substituted chip would do. “It will safeguard our secrets and make the ShiKahr’s jaunt drive unreliable,” was all the explanation she had offered, and all that Sarina had needed.

  Satisfied her work was done, she darted to the open doorway and checked the corridor. So far, so good. Choosing speed over caution, she sprinted back the way she had come.

  A squall of mechanical noise, like grinding gears and static, spat from the ship’s overhead speakers and echoed through the corridors. The universal translator circuit inside Sarina’s stealth suit parsed the Breen’s vocoder gibberish: “Attention, all decks. This is Thot Trom. Prepare for dimensional breach in ninety seconds. Command out.”

  Sarina reached the turbolift and pressed the call signal. She stepped against the bulkhead beside the lift’s doors, in case the pod that arrived turned out to be occupied. Phaser in hand, she tensed when she heard the faint thrumming of the magnetically propelled lift pod’s arrival. The doors parted with a low hiss. All was still.

  She pivoted to enter the lift—and found herself looking into the muzzle of a phaser. She raised her own weapon in a flash, as the one pointed at her jerked away. She deactivated her stealth suit. “Julian! What the hell?”

  “You didn’t answer.” He stepped back to let her inside the lift. “I thought—”

  “That you might get yourself killed? Your suit’s not even working!”

  He sighed. “Level Twenty-five, Section Ten. Priority transit.” The doors closed, and the pod began its swift descent into the bowels of the ship. He frowned. “You’re welcome.”

  * * *

  No one had asked for an update on the ShiKahr’s worsening tactical status, but Crin blurted one out before Trom could silence him. “Fifteen jaunt ships inbound. Ninety seconds to intercept.”

  “Steady.” Trom did his best to project certainty from the command chair. His posture was straight, and his movements were minimal. The crew had their orders; there was nothing to be gained by filling the air with chatter. He had to trust that if he just let them work—

  Solt’s voice filtered down from the overhead speakers. “Solt to command. Equations complete. Ready to breach the dimensional barrier.”

  “Well done. Lock in your formula and stand by.” Now it was time to act. “Helm. Power up the jaunt drive and patch in Solt’s new subspatial geometry.”

  “Yes, sir.” Yoab keyed in the commands, then paused to look back at Trom. “Sir, I need to remind you that we’ll have to drop out of warp to use the jaunt drive.”

  The pilot’s report lifted Karn’s focus from the tactical console. “Sir, the Enterprise is right behind us. If we drop to impulse, we’ll be vulnerable.”

  “No choice, Karn. Arm all weapons and route all backup power to the aft shields. It’s up to you to keep the Enterprise at bay until we’ve made it back to our universe.”

  Karn accepted the burden without further complaint. “Understood.”

  Yoab finished his preparations at the helm. “Jaunt parameters updated. Ready, sir.”

  Trom stood. “Attention all decks. This is Thot Trom. Prepare for dimensional breach in ninety seconds. Command out.” He stepped forward. “Helm. Take us out of warp.”

  “Dropping to impulse . . . now.” Yoab disengaged the warp drive, and the streaks of starlight on the main viewscreen retreated to cold points.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” Trom said. “Tactical, stand by to harass the Enterprise with preemptive fire.”

  “Here they come,” the tactical officer said. “Firing.” Soft feedback tones from his console heralded slashes of phaser light and the blazing streaks of torpedoes across the viewscreen. The ShiKahr’s opening salvo was swiftly answered by the thunder of the Enterprise’s counterattack.

  Trom raised his voice above the rumblings of battle. “Command to Solt.”

  “Go ahead, sir.”

  “Power up the jaunt drive. It’s time to go home.”

  * * *

  Bashir and Sarina sprang from the turbolift. Together they sprinted aft, abandoning stealth or caution in favor of speed. Every surface of the ship resonated with the rising hum of the
jaunt drive, which was on a fast buildup to activation, and the deck rocked with the devil’s drumbeat of weapons fire punishing the ShiKahr’s shields.

  By necessity, their beam-in location was also their exfiltration site. Because the Enterprise crew couldn’t scan through the ShiKahr’s shields to establish a transporter lock, they had to rely on being able to target their dematerialization sequence on a very limited area inside the ship. That meant the departure point had to be set in advance, and leaving from the same point at which they had arrived would entail the fewest new calculations.

  They were three-quarters of the way down the corridor to the exfiltration point when a disruptor shot screamed past Bashir’s head from behind.

  He ducked by reflex, then spun about-face and threw himself against the bulkhead, narrowly evading another flurry of shots down the middle of the passageway. In the fraction of a second it took him to turn about, Sarina reactivated her stealth suit.

  Through his suit’s holovisor, he saw her hit the deck and roll onto her back. Bashir filled the corridor behind him and Sarina with a wild barrage of phaser fire, and then he crouched to make himself as small a target as possible.

  The pair of Breen commandos who had spotted them poked their rifles back around the corners and returned Bashir’s mad attack with one of their own. One shot drilled through Bashir’s gut and launched him backward. Another tore into his thigh as he fell.

  A perfect shot by Sarina struck one of the commandos’ rifles. The weapon exploded in the trooper’s hands, and the blast obliterated him and his comrade.

  Sarina kneeled above Bashir and deactivated her stealth suit. “Are you all right?”

  He couldn’t answer; white-hot pain filled his body. All he could do was grit his teeth, focus on breathing, and try to hold back the primal scream that was building in his chest. She surveyed his wounds. “Can you walk?” He shook his head.

  Trom’s voice echoed down the passageway. “Stand by for dimensional breach.”

  Sarina holstered her weapon, grabbed Bashir by his arm, and helped him sit up. Despite her slight frame and fragile appearance, she possessed tremendous strength. She got beneath him and draped his weight across her shoulders. Then she lifted him from the deck and stumbled aft in trembling steps, plodding toward their designated exfiltration point.

  Bashir winced as the jaunt drive’s rising whine became deafening. The ShiKahr’s doomed jump was imminent. He shut his eyes. We’re not going to make it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Sarina said through clenched teeth. “And shut up, because we’re getting off this boat”—she collapsed onto her knees, plucked the recall beacon from her utility belt, and pressed its transmission switch—“right now.”

  Seconds passed, and they were still sitting in the passageway.

  Sarina looked with dismay at the recall beacon, then at Bashir. “Or not.”

  * * *

  Shouted reports overlapped strident alarms on the bridge of the Enterprise as it traded one salvo of phaser and torpedo fire after another with the ShiKahr. In all the commotion, there was one fact that Picard needed above all others, and his first officer used the power of her voice to get it from Troi. “Can you confirm the signal or not?”

  “There’s too much interference from the ShiKahr’s jaunt drive!” Troi fought with the interface on her console. “I’m boosting the gain on the receiver.”

  “Quickly, Commander,” Picard said, putting rare pressure on his security chief. “If they’ve triggered their recall beacon—”

  She shot a pointed stare at him. “I’m working on it.”

  Tolaris’s voice snapped Picard’s attention forward. “Their jaunt drive is spinning up!” On the main viewscreen, an eerie nimbus of energy formed around the ShiKahr. In seconds, the azure halo became a rippling shell of distorted space-time that enveloped the fleeing jaunt ship.

  “Signal confirmed!” Troi’s hands flew across her panel. “Trying to target the subspace transporter.” Her excitement became frustration and then dismay. “Still too much interference from the ShiKahr’s jaunt drive!”

  K’Ehleyr opened a channel from the console beside her chair. “Bridge to engineering!”

  “Go ahead,” Barclay replied.

  “Reg, we can’t lock the subspace transporter for beam-out. Can you filter out the interference from the ShiKahr?”

  “Already on it. Hang on!”

  Precious moments slipped away, and it felt to Picard as if time accelerated while he watched a wormhole unlike any he’d ever seen form in front of the ShiKahr. Instead of the soothing blue swirl he had come to expect, this one was the color of blood, and flashes of crimson light spilled from its seemingly bottomless maw. Whereas all the other artificial wormholes he had ever seen had evoked for him images of doorways to some mythical higher plane, this one looked like a pit to some fiery underworld—and the ShiKahr was racing into it.

  Picard turned toward K’Ehleyr, his heart full of hope and dread. “Number One?”

  She deflected his seeking gaze with a questioning look at Troi.

  Troi kept her eyes and hands on her console, as if she were fighting to conjure a miracle.

  On the viewscreen, the ShiKahr hurtled into the dark vortex, which contracted shut behind it. A blinding flash erupted as the wormhole closed.

  Warnings shrilled on Tolaris’s console. The Vulcan yelled, “Brace for impact!”

  Hellish thunder engulfed the Enterprise. A hard lurch sent Picard sprawling across the deck. He collided with K’Ehleyr, who was also rolling to port—and then they and the rest of the bridge crew were thrown upward as something overwhelmed the ship’s artificial gravity and its inertial dampeners. Picard’s balding pate slammed against one of the overhead lights. Then the ship righted itself, and everyone plunged back to the deck.

  Picard felt the sting of the fresh cut on the top of his head, and a warm trickle of blood traced an erratic streak down his forehead. He shook off the dizziness of the blow and made himself stand up. Beside him, K’Ehleyr slowly regained her balance. He reached out and took her arm to steady her until she nodded that she was all right, and then he looked at Troi.

  She hunched over her stuttering console and poked at its controls. Then she looked up at Picard and read his question in his eyes. A smile lit up her face. “Mister Barclay confirms Douglas and Bashir are safely aboard—and they’re reporting ‘mission accomplished.’ ”

  Finally, some good news. “Tell Mister Barclay I said, ‘Well done.’ ” He added with a rakish smile, “Then tell him I want full damage reports and repair estimates in two hours.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  K’Ehleyr sidled over to Picard and dropped her voice to a confidential hush. “Barclay had to keep his tweaks to the ShiKahr’s jaunt drive subtle so the Breen wouldn’t detect the changes. Are we sure we did enough to prevent it from getting through?”

  Picard thought of the spinning vortex of fire that had swallowed the ShiKahr. “All I know for certain, Number One, is that I’m glad I’m not aboard that ship right now.”

  * * *

  Flames lapped at Trom’s arms as he ducked for cover from the bridge’s cascade of exploding consoles. Sparks fell like rain from ruptured plasma conduits overhead. If not for the air filters in his mask and the haze-penetrating filters of his visor, he had no doubt he would be blind and choking on hot, bitter smoke. Staggering across the yawing deck, he stumbled over Crin’s dead body and fell hard against the back of Yoab’s chair. “What happened?”

  “No idea, sir!” The pilot entered one futile set of commands after another into the helm. His vocoder was unable to conceal the panic in his voice as he shouted above the banshee wails of the ship’s engines. “The wormhole’s completely unstable!”

  An explosion knocked Trom sideways with a bowel-shaking shock wave. He picked himself up off the deck and climbed the operations console to get himself back to upright. “I’ll try to patch reserve power into the—”

  “It
’s gone,” Yoab interrupted. “We’re on batteries, and they’re bleeding power fast.”

  Trom fought to make the operations panel obey him. All he needed was one small break in his favor: another ounce of power, a working subspace comm circuit, a shield generator that hadn’t overloaded. But it was no use. The wormhole had reduced the ShiKahr to a wounded, defenseless husk that was mute and robbed of power.

  We were so close, Trom lamented. We had it all—

  The twisting fires of the wormhole vanished with a searing flash and a crushing thunderclap. The macabre shrieks of the jaunt drive went silent. Trom looked at the main viewscreen. Through the jittery hash of interference, he saw the comforting normalcy of deep space peppered with stars—and then the broad, shallow curve of a cinnamon-hued planet looming large directly ahead of them.

  “Report,” he snapped, prompting Yoab out of his stupor and back into action.

  The pilot checked his console. “Engines are still off-line. No warp, no impulse, nothing.”

  A review of the operations panel yielded nothing but more bad news, which Trom kept to himself. His stolen ship, his prize beyond measure, was crippled, powerless, burning on multiple decks, and venting plasma as it dived without shields or communications toward the reddish-brown orb whose gravity had taken hold of it.

  Had they at least made it home? He looked at Yoab. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere inside Federation space,” Yoab said. “Alpha Quadrant, I—” He froze.

  Trom got up and loomed over Yoab’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “The chronometer,” Yoab said.

  The commander looked at it, and his blood ran cold. “That can’t be right.”

  “I computed the date by comparing star positions against the closest Federation temporal beacon.” He looked at Trom. “The ship’s time matched our suits’ chronometers before we left.”

  No. Trom backed away from the console. It wasn’t possible. The date had been the same in both universes when Trom and his team had traveled through the rift at Ikkuna Station. But if the new chrono readings were correct, then something had gone terribly wrong. Going by the Federation’s standard calendar, they had begun their journey in January 2386.