Star Trek®: Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows

by Marco Palmieri

  “Sheng?” Khatami whispered.

  Zhao holstered a pistol and touched her cheek. “I promised I would come for you. Forgive me that it took so long.”

  “You came,” she said. “That’s all that matters.” Atish straightened and tore the slave hood from her shoulders.

  “You’re a fool!” Desai’s voice was a snarl. “Whatever you think you’ve accomplished, you have no comprehension of the power we have at our command!”

  Khatami embraced her lover and they kissed, passion burning in both of them. Her hand snaked down to his belt as they broke off. “I’m going to free you, Rana.” Atish’s fingers grasped the butt of a phaser. “The same freedom you gave Quinn and a thousand others.”

  Desai cried out, holding up her hands. Khatami spun and fired a pulse of light into her. The inquisitor’s screech faded away as the blast flashed her into free atoms.

  “Time to go,” said Zhao. He nodded to Mkembe, who raised a communicator to his lips.

  T’Prynn looked up from the console. “Transporter room confirms. Landing party and asset recovered.”

  Klisiewicz nodded, waving a wisp of smoke from in front of him. “Then we’re done. Helm, get us out of here, power to shields and drives…” His voice trailed off as something huge and sharp and silver-gray exploded out of the starbase’s hull on the screen before him, ripping the docked Klingon ship in two. “What the hell is that?”

  The Vulcan raised an eyebrow. “It would appear to be…a blade.”

  The human was gone, but the Wanderer did not care; she had only the burning, screaming need to murder and destroy.

  One moment, the cage, the horrible, tiny cage, was surrounding her; the next, it was nothing but crude matter once again. Matter that she could assimilate, that she could discorporate and make part of herself.

  The Shedai screamed and exploded, in nanoseconds sucking energy and mass from the structure of the crude Telinaruul construct. She altered molecules by thought to replenish herself and spread across the Vanguard thing like a cancer, annihilating and absorbing.

  The crude flickers of life panicked and died beneath her onslaught. In blinks of energy, she glimpsed little puffs of memory and thought, flashes so transient she barely registered them. She was dimly aware that she was killing these humanoids by the hundreds, trampling them beneath great blades of glittering crystal. In those moments, her rage found brief focus.

  There. At the apex of the construct. One Telinaruul. The one. The pain giver. The one who would dare to name himself master of our space.

  She swallowed up the chamber surrounding the Reyes flicker, slowing her advance to give it time to understand the utter hopelessness of its situation. It fired hot light into her mass, unaware that each pulse fed her a little more.

  She registered sound-wave perturbations through the surface of her body; the humanoid was calling out, trying to communicate with the Wanderer. For a brief instant, she wondered what it might have to say to her; but then she dismissed the idea and killed it.

  Zhao pushed his way past fallen stanchions and injured men to enter the bridge, as Klisiewicz rose from his command throne. On the screen, Vanguard diminished as the starship pulled away, but with impulse engines damaged, the retreat was agonizingly slow.

  Starbase 47 was mutating. The human-made spindle shape was still visible, but now it looked like a strange, abstract rendering carved from planes of shimmering, writhing crystal. Streams of glowing matter issued from its surface, weblike filaments that turned toward Endeavour, seeking to snare it.

  “What’s happening?” said Khatami, following him.

  “Molecular conversion.” Ming paled. “All of the organic and inorganic matter…it’s the alien that Reyes captured, the Shedai. It’s free, it’s consuming it.”

  “Alien?” Zhao shot T’Prynn a hard look. “You were aware of this?”

  She nodded. “It was need-to-know information.”

  “Damn you!” snarled the captain. “You knew something of that magnitude was aboard Vanguard, and you said nothing?”

  “Sir,” Klisiewicz warned. “Those…tendrils are going to reach us. We don’t have the speed to escape.”

  T’Prynn touched her communicator earpiece. “Do not be concerned. I have initiated a contingency plan.”

  “Incoming vessels!” Pennington called out. “Multiple warp signatures, dozens of them.”

  “Identify!” snapped Klisiewicz.

  Zhao saw the distinctive arrowhead shapes flicker out of warp to surround the remains of Vanguard. “Tholians. A warfleet.”

  As one, the Tholian ships opened fire, a single pulse of light hammering into the faceted crystal monstrosity. For one terrible moment, Zhao thought the Shedai would absorb the attack and expand to engulf them all; but then some critical mass was exceeded, and the glittering shape became a tiny supernova, shattering, burning, and dying. This isn’t an attack, he realized, it’s an execution.

  All that was left of the Shedai and Vanguard station cohered into a dead, smoldering mass, surrounded by broken mirror-bright pieces of itself. They watched as the Tholian craft, some severely damaged by the shockwave, disengaged and turned to face the Endeavour.

  “Signal,” said Klisiewicz.

  Zhao nodded to him, and the grating synthetic tones of a Tholian voice filled the smoke-dirtied bridge. “Attention, Terran Empire vessel. Your message was received and acted upon.”

  “Our message?” Khatami glanced at Zhao.

  T’Prynn gave a nod. “I contacted them. Admiral Spock suspected that events would unfold toward this conclusion and gave me the means. I offered the Tholian Assembly the chance to assist us.”

  The voice continued. “Be advised. The zone of space you designate as the Taurus Reach is under our jurisdiction. The presence of alien intruders will not be tolerated. Carry this message to your government. You are never to return here.”

  The signal ceased, and on the screen the Tholian ships began to move into a new formation. Zhao watched as they began to etch a web around the fragments of the lifeless Shedai.

  “They’re taking the dead home with them,” said Ming.

  Zhao nodded. “And we will do the same.” He glanced at Klisiewicz. “Set course for the nearest Imperial Spacedock.”

  His first officer saluted, fist to chest. “As you order, Commodore Zhao.”

  Atish draped herself around his shoulders. “Commodore? You know, I never liked that rank. Not until now.” She smiled. “It makes you sound like a warrior.”

  “And not a pirate?” He settled back in his chair, folding his arms across his gun belt. “I think it will fit me well. And when we bring the Empress Sato news of Reyes’s duplicity, there will be spoils for us all.”

  They met on one of the lower decks where Endeavour’s internal security coverage was less than total.

  “Show me,” said T’Prynn.

  Ming opened the modified tricorder and offered her a data card. “I didn’t get it all,” he explained. “Ninety-five percent of Operation Vanguard’s research database is in here.”

  She took it from him. “It will be enough. And the sample?”

  Gingerly, Ming produced a glass tube from a hidden compartment in the tricorder. He held it as if he were afraid of it. “Here. After what we saw it do, the sooner this is far away from me, the better.”

  T’Prynn held the tube up to the light. Inside was a sliver of metallic crystal, shifting between solidity and a shimmering liquid form.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

  “Preserve it.” She glanced at him. “For the future.”

  The Traitor

  Michael Jan Friedman

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE: “The Traitor” takes place during the 2340s (ACE), while the resistance to the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance (“Crossover,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) is ill organized and easily stamped out. This is prior to Jean-Luc Picard working for Gul Madred, in 2366 (Star Trek Mirror Universe: Glass Empires—The Worst of Both Worlds
).

  Michael Jan Friedman has written or co-written sixty-five science fiction, fantasy, and young adult books, a great many of them in the Star Trek universe. In an unguarded moment, he will admit to being the creator of the Stargazer crew, if not the Stargazer herself (which was first seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Battle” back in 1987). Ben Zoma and Pug Joseph, who figure prominently in “The Traitor,” first saw the light of day in Friedman’s novel Reunion, the first Next Generation hardcover, which came out in 1992. Gerda Idun, Wu, and some of the others originated in the Stargazer series that debuted a decade later.

  Friedman became a full-time freelance writer in 1985 following the publication of his first novel, The Hammer and the Horn. Since then, he has written for television, radio, magazines, and comic books. His television credits include “Resistance,” a first-season episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

  A native New Yorker, he lives with his wife and two sons on Long Island, where he spends his free time (what little he can find of it) running, kayaking, and playing single-wall handball.

  The captain had just swiveled ninety degrees in her hard, plastic command chair to call up another series of engine-efficiency reports—hoping they would help her wring a little more speed out of the Lakul—when Gerda Idun called her name.

  There was a distinct undercurrent of urgency in the helm officer’s voice, an unmistakable note of concern. And the steely-eyed Gerda Idun was not the type to show much emotion, even at the most perilous times.

  “Yes?” the captain responded.

  “We’ve got a vessel off the starboard bow,” said Gerda Idun, tucking a stray lock of pale blond hair behind her ear. “Four thousand kilometers.”

  The captain’s throat constricted. Of all the times—“Show me,” she said, swiveling her chair back the other way to face the large, eyelike oval of the bridge’s forward viewscreen.

  For a moment, the image on the screen lingered, displaying the fifth planet in the sprawling star system they had entered only minutes earlier. The midsized sphere was swaddled in blankets of cloud that made it difficult to see the land and water beneath them, though the captain was quite sure they were there.

  Then the scene jumped several levels of magnification, and a vessel appeared on the viewer. It filled less than a tenth of the screen, but it wasn’t difficult to tell that it was a transport—a Terran model.

  What was difficult was figuring out what it was doing there. The Alliance had a nasty habit of destroying vessels of Terran origin out of hand, without so much as a comm warning. That persuaded most human crews to steer clear of restricted space.

  But not this crew. Why not? the captain wondered, leaning forward in her chair.

  Then Gerda Idun supplied the explanation.

  Turning to face the captain’s chair, she said—with a burr of undisguised distaste in her voice—“It’s the Stargazer.”

  The captain frowned deeply. She might have said a great many things at that moment, none of them the least bit pleasant, but all she uttered was one word: “Picard.”

  “Seems that way,” said Ben Zoma, who had predictably appeared at her side.

  Jean-Luc Picard was a traitor to his kind, a treasure-hunting profiteer who regularly planted kisses on the Klingons’ backsides so he could relieve the quadrant of its most ancient curiosities without interruption. Other Terrans suffered hideously under the yoke of Alliance oppression, paying for their survival with their dignity and sometimes a good deal more. Of all of them, only Picard had turned the situation to personal advantage.

  As far as the captain was concerned, that translated into “scum” in any language.

  The muscles in Ben Zoma’s jaw rippled beneath two days’ growth of dark, gold-flecked beard. “I wonder,” he said, “what he’s doing in this part of the—”

  “Captain!” snapped Pug Joseph from his position at the tactical console. “Picard’s not alone.” He swore under his breath as he consulted his monitors one after the other, his fingers flying over his keyboard like a swarm of Vobilite darter worms. “I’m picking up a Klingon cruiser—D’tag-class!”

  The captain tamped down her anger and disappointment. After all the trouble they had gone to…“How far?”

  “Ten minutes,” Joseph spat. “Maybe a little less.”

  Their sensors weren’t as discerning as the Klingons’ or even the Cardassians’. But then, the Lakul was just an old cargo transport, and cargo transports didn’t carry such finely tuned instruments. Not even when they needed them.

  The Klingons were known to board ships at random, hoping to find evidence of some resistance against the Alliance. A sophisticated sensor system would have been exactly the type of thing they were looking for. It would have given the Lakul and her crew away as dissidents and insurrectionists.

  Likewise a discernible weapons array—which was why they weren’t a match for even a Klingon scout ship, much less a fully armed battle cruiser. They had to get out of there. But they weren’t going to be leaving the system alone, not if the captain had anything to say about it.

  “Gerda Idun,” she said as evenly as she could, “head for the Stargazer at full impulse.” Next, she turned to Joseph and gave him his own set of instructions. “When that’s done,” she said, turning back to Gerda Idun, “resume course.”

  The captain turned to Ben Zoma. “You’ve got the bridge.”

  “Acknowledged,” he replied.

  Sliding out of her command chair, the captain made her way aft to the turbolift doors. They parted at her approach—albeit a little too slowly, as usual—and gave her access to the compartment beyond. Punching a quick sequence into the control pad on the wall ahead of her, she instructed the lift to take her two decks down to the primary cargo bay.

  After all, that’s where the transporter was.

  When the captain entered the humming gloom of the cargo bay through its open doorway, Krollage was already standing there, his phaser planted in his fist. He nodded to her.

  She nodded back. Then she turned to the transporter platform, folded her arms across her chest, and waited for Joseph to finish his work up on the bridge.

  Had the captain been in Picard’s place, she would have amped up the power of her vessel’s token shield generators a long time ago. That would have made it harder for people to do what Joseph was doing. But with the Klingons on his side, Picard probably hadn’t felt the need for extra protection.

  That’s about to change, the captain mused.

  The first thing that appeared on the slightly raised disc of the transporter platform was a column of golden light. It would have been bright under any circumstances, but the lack of ambient light in the room made it look even brighter. So bright, in fact, that the captain had to squint to discern the appearance of a shape in the column—something that started out vague and spindly but, over the span of several seconds, became increasingly manlike.

  She had heard that Cardassian teleporters took only a few seconds to effect a transport. But she and her crew weren’t Cardassians. They had to make do with the equipment they had.

  Finally, the shape in the light column solidified into a recognizable individual. Only then did the light fade away, leaving an angry-looking Jean-Luc Picard in its wake.

  “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, taking a step down from the platform.

  Krollage intervened, checking the newcomer’s progress. Picard’s nostrils flared, but he remained where he was.

  “I ask you again,” he said, no less imperiously, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Taking you off your ship,” the captain told him, her tone flat and controlled.

  “Under whose authority?”

  She chuckled to herself. “You’ve been sucking up to the Klingons too long, Picard. They’re the ones who go on about things like jurisdiction and authority. They and the Cardassians and the damned Bajorans.”

  “They’re the ones who have all the weapons,” Picard
reminded her.

  “Not all of them,” said the captain, tilting her head to indicate the phaser in Krollage’s hand.

  Picard’s eyes narrowed beneath his tousled thatch of dark hair. “What do you want with me?”

  “That all depends,” said the captain, “on what you’re doing here.”

  “What do you think I’m doing here?”

  The captain eyed him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to answer a question with a question?”

  “You know what I do,” Picard told her. “Archaeologists keep the details of their research to themselves.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you’re an archaeologist, are you? My apologies. I thought you were a grave robber. And a traitorous grave robber at that.”

  Picard’s mouth became a straight, taut line. “Look,” he said, “this is a rather substantial treasure I have discovered. If you are looking for a piece of the action, say eighty-twenty…”

  The captain shook her head.

  “Seventy-thirty, then,” he told her. “That seems fair, considering I will be doing all the work.”

  “I’m not looking for a cut of your ill-gotten gains,” said the captain. “What I want is an explanation. Tell me how you wound up in this particular star system at this particular time—minutes after my ship showed up here—with a D’tag-class cruiser firmly in tow.”

  “A D’tag—?” Picard’s brow furrowed. “If there’s a Klingon cruiser in the vicinity, it has nothing to do with me.”

  “Right,” said the captain. “Because you’ve had nothing to do with the Klingons. Ever.”

  Picard scowled. “The Klingons tolerate me, look the other way sometimes in exchange for my help with certain matters. But I did not bring them to this system. I swear it.”