by Diane Carey
At tactical, Mike Dennis said, “Ready, sir.”
On the main screen, several nebulas and clouds floated in a spectacular panorama, some closer than others, some intermingling slowly, very slowly on the scale of cosmic time, so slowly that they seemed engaged in an unending kiss. The colors were stunning. Over three active years, Riker had forgotten what this sector looked like. Jewel-toned wonders of nature sprayed everywhere, mounted on the velvet trophy shroud of open space. Bright marigold dust streaks glittered like brocade in the middle of the screen. To the left were two moth-winged clusters intertwined, heavy with sparkling minerals the colors of sherbet.
To the right and below were a half-dozen disruptions in various shapes, still shrouded in the impact clouds from the asteroids that came free out of the belt at the edge of this solar system.
The sun here was far off, but very bright, casting glorious light upon all these wonders. What a lovely area of space, like a giant casino. Too bad it was so close to restricted space. Hardly anybody would be able to enjoy it.
At once he felt privileged. Sometimes he forgot to appreciate his special position in life.
He turned to mention some part of this, but instantly dismissed it when a hard hit from starboard knocked the ship sideways in space. Half the crew fell or fumbled, but scrambled back to position almost instantly, except for Mike Dennis, who went down on a knee—and apparently it hurt. He took a few seconds longer to pull back to his post.
The lights on the bridge flickered. The ship whined with strain as her systems tried to pull her back to her heading, but she recovered faster than Riker could think about what should be done to make her recover.
“Whoa . . .” Bateson looked around at the flagging lights. “I had no idea that lowered shield power would make that much of a difference—”
“Sir, that strike was ninety-seven percent Starfleet phaser power!” Mike Dennis reported. “Why haven’t they reduced their output?”
“Sir, I’m reading full shields on the other vessel,” Data reported.
“Identify that ship,” Bateson ordered. “Confirm registry as the Nora Nicholas.”
“Confirmed, sir,” Wolfe said instantly. “Emissions and configuration are Starfleet standard.”
That was fast, Riker thought as he pushed out of his chair. He just couldn’t sit down once the ship had been struck. Why had the hit been so hard?
“Could there have been a miscommunication?” he asked.
“We had direct acknowledgment from Captain Brownell. I spoke to him myself.” Watching the smoldering green cloud from which the hit must’ve come, Bateson seemed as if he were trying to look with X-ray eyes through that soupy mess. The cloud churned and boiled, stirred up by the movement of the ship hiding inside it.
“Increase our shield power,” Bateson said.
“That’ll take seven or eight minutes, Captain,” Scott said, but he started working.
“Weapons?”
“Require five minutes to bring phasers up to full power, sir,” Data reported. “Photon torpedoes are not on line, in accordance with Starfleet War Game Regulations.”
“How long to get them on line?”
“Nineteen minutes, sir, from main engineering.”
Bateson turned around. “Scotty, can you get that done?”
“Sir, I can do that,” Lieutenant Wolfe volunteered. “My minor was quantum physics of motive powered projectiles.”
“Scotty?”
“Let him do it, sir.”
“Go, John. Scotty, keep working on the shields.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Geordi, take over main science.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Mike, target that ship.”
“Targeting,” Mike Dennis responded as Wolfe hurried past him and disappeared into the turbolift. “Sir, the cloud is obscuring sensor contact. I can’t get a true fix. I get general movements within about a hundred meters.”
“Another hit coming in!” La Forge shouted suddenly, and hardly were his words out when the ship was rocked again, then again almost instantly.
The ship screamed in protest as nearly full-power phasers blasted her lowered deflectors. The lights flashed again, this time with more violence than the last, and there was obviously real damage crackling through the systems.
“LBD shutdown!” Dennis called out over the noise.
“Losing liquid helium in the loops,” La Forge said at the same time. “We’ve got heat buildup. Attempting to compensate.”
“Shields, Scotty,” Bateson urged.
Scott didn’t look up. “Working on it, sir, but that second hit took out two polarity generators. They knew our shields would be reduced and they’re trying to keep them that way.”
“Time to repair?”
“At least thirty minutes, sir!” Scott didn’t wait for an order or anything else. He snapped his fingers, said, “La Forge, take over here! Dennis take science! Data, take over tactical!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Aye, sir!”
Scott ducked into the turbolift and was consumed by the gush of the tube door.
Musical posts again. Riker’s stomach tightened. What was going on? Not war games, that was for sure, unless the admirals were really out to test this ship in unorthodox ways. More like insane ways.
Captain Bateson didn’t contradict Scott’s reassignments, but watched as the men settled into their new posts and took a moment to acclimate to the readings.
“These aren’t Starfleet emissions!” La Forge blurted. “Intercept sensors indicate the contact is fourteen meters too long in hull configuration, with all the wrong emissions readings. It’s definitely not the Nora Nicholas.”
“Could sensors be obscured by the cloud?” Riker asked.
“Not this much, sir.”
Bateson looked at La Forge. “But Wolfe confirmed it!”
La Forge swiveled in his chair, insisting, “He was wrong, sir!”
“Then who is it?” Riker demanded. “Who is that?”
“And what happened to the Nora Nicholas?” Bateson wondered, peering at the swarming cloud in which their unidentified antagonist hid.
Dayton turned, one hand on his earpiece. “Contact is hailing us, sir . . . but it’s not a Starfleet—sir, it’s a Klingon signal!”
“And those aren’t phasers hitting us,” La Forge angrily said. “They’re disruptors!”
Bateson shot Riker a glance, and looked far more stunned than vindicated. “Wizz, respond!”
“Frequency open, sir.”
“This is Captain Bateson in command of the U.S.S. Enterprise. You are in Federation space and in violation of the Neutral Zone treaty. Identify yourselves and prepare to stand down.”
“Morgan Bateson. Welcome home. And bid welcome to the warrior whose name you ruined. Identify yourself as the plague you are, and prepare to lose everything.”
“Kozara!” Bateson hurled. Then he suddenly laughed, a horrible, ironic laugh. “Oh, you bloodblister!”
Riker turned quickly. “You seem to have good instincts!”
“I thought it’d be five years, not five minutes!” Shaking his head, Morgan Bateson drew a long breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Boy . . . there are times when I really hate to be right.”
Chapter 18
“Are we still hidden?”
“Yes, the cloud is obscuring us for now.” Gaylon answered Zaidan’s question with reserve. He did not like speaking to his son.
The whole crew was nervous, knowing what a chronic failure Kozara had been. And now they were going up against the Federation’s newest, most powerful ship.
Zaidan eyed the controls Gaylon was working, and clearly understood nothing on the board. “What if he sees us?”
“He already knows we are here. He probably will be unable to take aim with this cloud around us.”
“When will we come out of the cloud?”
“At your father’s bidding.”
“What if
the sabotage is a lie? What if they have compensations? Are their weapons bigger than ours? What if . . . what if our information is wrong? What if he can see through the cloud with his sensors?”
“Then we will be destroyed.” Gaylon pushed off his console and looked at Zaidan. “Now you begin to see how much can go wrong. We can be as ferocious and tough as we wish and it might change nothing. If fate turns against us, we will be destroyed.”
“Then why do you follow my father?”
“Because he is our commander. If there is failure, it will never come because we failed to follow or he failed to lead. His shame is ours. We are a crew with nothing to lose. Is that not why you also are here?”
Zaidan squared his shoulders defiantly. “I come here with you because I want this one chance to get out from under my father’s shame. I want a chance at honor.”
“Yes, I know.” Gaylon leaned forward and lowered his voice. He did not want Kozara to hear. “But we know something important which you have never learned, Klingon boy. ‘Honor’ may be ‘luck.’ What if yours is bad? How do you fault a man for that? Your father is no coward. As we go in to destroy the man who turned our luck sour, remember that. It was not Bateson who took away our honor. It was the Klingon way that only sees winning as a victory.”
“Scotty, we’ve got to have those shields!”
“Coming, sir. Got roughly fifty percent and building.”
“I’ll take it. Red alert.”
“Red alert, aye.”
With that order, everything changed. Systems that had lain idle now glowed to life. Emergency lights on the deck shone a soft pink, and would be red if the main lights were cut off.
Suddenly Andy Welch thrust to his feet at the helm and shouted, “Look!”
All eyes turned to the main screen. Out of the churning pot of nebula gasses and dust, the tip of a constructed mass appeared—a point. No Starfleet ship had a pointed bow.
Instantly the rest of the mystery solved itself. An olive-colored head burst out of the cloud, followed by a truncated neck, and battle-moded wings in a threatening arch.
There it was. A Klingon ship where a Starfleet ship was supposed to be. A Klingon ship on this side of the border.
“Andy,” Bateson said evenly, “sit down, take a deep breath, and come about and engage the enemy.”
“Captain!” Riker stepped into the command arena. “We have to withdraw and call for backup! He’s got something on us or he wouldn’t try this. Without some kind of edge, it would be crazy. He’s got to have an edge.”
“Kozara’s crazy. Most Klingons are.”
“No, he’s not, sir, or the Empire would never have given him a fighter and let him come here. That ship can’t catch us if we don’t want it to.”
“I’m not going to run. I set him up and he fell for it, and we’re going to take him down.”
Riker stared at him blankly for a moment. “So you were baiting the Klingons. This ‘powered down war game’ was a lure to pull them across the border.”
“That’s right, and they fell for it, and we’re not leaving without springing the trap. Data, put our strongest shields to him. Phasers ready . . . fire!”
The ship thrummed with power, but not enough power. A ship geared for war games couldn’t be brought up to full power in a matter of seconds.
On the screen, Kozara’s ship angled into the phaser streak and took the shot easily on its strongest shields. Even underpowered, the starship packed a punch compared to a smaller fighting vessel like that, and the Klingon ship wobbled. But the shields held.
And the return fire plumed through space with enthusiasm—full disruptors, almost to the level of Starfleet’s full-phasers. Of course, the Enterprise didn’t have full-phasers with which to respond, or even full shields with which to deflect the disruptor fire.
The enemy shots cut through key areas of the starship’s hull, and reports flashed in from all over the ship.
“Inertial baseline system’s faltering, sir!” Dennis said, just as La Forge called over his snapping console, “I’m getting breach of integrity in the deuterium flow!”
“Plasma distribution manifold just collapsed,” Data reported. “Prefire chambers are shutting down.”
“Does that mean we can’t shoot?” Bateson asked.
La Forge was apparently already on the problem. “Hamilton reports they’re working on it, but they’re undermanned.”
Riker held onto the helm console as the ship shuddered under return fire and took hits on her reduced shields. “Sir, I strongly recommend against this course of action.”
“What do you recommend?”
“I recommend withdrawal.” Riker called up all his personal restraint to keep from adding what else?
Bateson shook his head. “We can’t give him the idea that Starfleet will run before we’re even on our knees. Don’t you understand? This is a test. They’re testing us. They haven’t fought us in a century. They want to see if we still have a backbone. Come on, propulsion! Maneuver behind him. We’re bigger, but we’re more maneuverable too. Stretch yourself, Andy. Push!”
At the helm, Andy Welch was sweating like a pig. “Okay, aye . . .”
“Push! She won’t break. Phasers, target the fighter’s aft section. He’ll have all his shields forward. Get him where he’s weakest. He won’t expect that. Fire at will.”
“Aye, sir,” Data responded, and enabled the phasers.
Streaks of controlled energy bored through space and struck the Klingon fighter on the aft underside, and the whole ship lurched.
“No breach of the hull,” Mike Dennis reported. “Phasers aren’t powerful enough for—Captain, I’m getting MJL overload!”
“Where?”
“Right here!”
Riker started toward Dennis. “Get away from it!”
The overload blew out of the subprocessor housing in a funnel-shaped plume, driving Mike Dennis straight backward with sheer force and Riker back the way he’d come. He skidded to the carpet on his side. At his feet, Dennis landed flat on the lower deck, his face flecked with burns.
As Riker scrambled to him, Dennis’s hands and arms were scorched to shreds.
Near Riker’s left ear, Bateson punched his chair arm panel. “Sickbay! Medical emergency!”
“Medics on the way,” the acknowledgment came from a voice Riker didn’t recognize.
“Gabe, take over tactical,” Bateson ordered.
Bush blinked, stared, held his hands close to his chest and twisted them together.
Riker looked up. “You’ve got your orders, Mr. Bush. Get up.”
“Don’t order me around,” Bush said, but with little force. He got up, though, and found his way past Dennis without stepping on the injured man’s legs—quite an accomplishment.
“Bridge, engineering.”
Tapping his combadge, Bateson responded, “Go ahead, engineering.”
It was Ham Hamilton, speaking for himself. “Cap, systems are shutting down all over the ship. We’ve got some catastrophic failures to handle. Can we have a few minutes of buffer?”
“I’ll try. Andy, bend off a few thousand kilometers,” Bateson ordered then. “Give me some room to maneuver.”
“Aye, sir . . .”
The forward screen swirled, and the starship veered away, leaving the Klingon ship behind by half a nebula or so.
“Is he following?” the captain asked.
“Negative, sir,” Bush reported. “He’s holding position.”
“Why would he do that?”
Riker stood up. “Captain, you got trumped and you’re not seeing the warning signs.”
Not so caught up in having his own way that he wasn’t going to pick up on that, Bateson openly asked, “Warning signs of what?”
“Systems are shutting down all over the ship. It’s sabotage!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
The captain’s words drove a spear of frustration through the middle of Riker’s chest and left him breathles
s. Bateson was consumed with the bravado of what fighting Klingons used to be.
The argument took a tense sabbatical as two medics piled out of the lift. With help from La Forge, they dumped Mike Dennis onto an antigrav gurney and buzzed him back into the lift. Now the deck was clear, and both Bateson and Riker had taken the chance to think.
“This ship is brand-new,” the captain went on, but to his credit there was a tinge of doubt in his voice as he continued to think about what Riker had said. “When would it have been sabotaged?”
The flicker of contemplation, a hint that Bateson was ready to admit he was wrong if he could be proven to be, made Riker grip his tone like a pair of reins and keep control of it. “I don’t know, but we should back off to make repairs and notify Starfleet.”
“We’re going back in to engage the enemy, Will,” Bateson said, calm as a rug.
“Why take the chance, sir? It’s one ship out here in the middle of nowhere. All right, they’ve got a few shots on us. So what? Let’s go alert Starfleet. Sir, we’ve got a ship undermanned by two-thirds, and most of those men are tech specialists, not field officers. These men and women were the designers of the systems. That doesn’t mean they’re the best at using them in actual battle. They can run the ship, but not necessarily fight with it.”
Bateson gestured at the distant ship on the screen as it hovered in wait of their return. “You really want me to risk having Kozara go back to the empire and tell them how weak our new starship is?”
“The Klingon Empire has already heard all our messages,” Riker told him. “Sir, we’ve been duped. Kozara knows the ship isn’t weak. He obviously had advance knowledge about the war games powerdown and he had design information about this vessel because he hit us right where it hurts most. And on top of all that, he’s betting you’ll do just what you’re doing. That’s why he’s not chasing us. You said ‘know your enemy.’ Sir, your enemy knows you. And he’s had ninety years to get it right!”
“Ninety-three.” Bateson smoldered.
