Star Trek

by John Jackson Miller

  The violence, Georgiou knew, wasn’t limited to the stars.

  “Look where that rock’s heading!” Finnegan said as Dax turned Boyington hard about. The immense boulder soared directly toward a giant orange moon. Pizza-faced, it was much marred by its gravitic proximity to so many other large bodies—and now it received another blight, as the boulder entered its atmosphere and exploded.

  “Direct hit!” Dax said.

  “Of course,” Georgiou said. “Someone was aiming.”

  Various tribes of Dromax had been battling with one another since time immemorial, she explained; on receiving the gift of spaceflight from early traders, they’d spread to all livable moons surrounding the gas giant. And many unlivable smaller ones, which the various Dromaxian forces used as platforms for mass drivers to launch still smaller bodies at their enemies.

  Finnegan and Dax saw one of the launchers in action as an object in a higher orbit fired a hunk of rock in the direction of the source of the previous projectile. Watching ginormous bullets soar through space was a curious experience, Georgiou had found; they had none of the immediacy of energy weapons or even torpedoes. But while their transits might be relatively lazy, their impacts were immense.

  “Boom!” Finnegan shouted as the stone, propelled into space by an electromagnetic launch system, slammed into a moonlet, pulverizing the installation that resided there.

  “The Casmarrans manufacture the mass drivers,” Georgiou said. “Quintilian ships those and other weapons and returns with raw materials.”

  Dax gawked at the destruction. “Isn’t he worried about running out of customers?”

  “I don’t think so. He says the replacement rate for the Dromax is quite high.”

  “Good ol’ Gnaeus,” Finnegan said. “I was going to ask him what his people did for fun. Apparently they multiply.”

  “When they’re not subtracting,” Dax added.

  Georgiou thought back. “They were nowhere near as prolific in my continuum. Their numbers declined after I pressed them into service.” The same as just about every other subject species, she did not add. “I didn’t give them a lot of freedom to replicate, however they do that, so maybe that’s the difference.”

  “I know you’re very proud,” Dax said. “Where are we going?”

  Finnegan referred to the screen before the copilot’s seat. “From the guide Quintilian sent us, the sun’s called Dromax. The giant planet is called Dromax. And the moons—”

  “Let me guess. All called Dromax.”

  “No, they’re known by numbers.”

  “Oh, like stars in our star systems. Dromax I, II, and so forth.”

  “No, just the numbers. The first moon is just called One. The second, Two.”

  Dax sighed. “ ‘No points for artistry,’ my old coach would say.”

  “Creative, they’re not. That’s why all their manufactured goods come from Casmarra,” Georgiou said. “That, and they’re too busy warring. You should like it, Finnegan. It’s an endless brawl with no point and no end.”

  He shrugged. “It’s been donkey’s years. We’ll be lucky if Jadama Rohn isn’t smashed under a rock.”

  In fact, Georgiou didn’t know where in the system it was—just that Michael and her captain had found some record of the trade. It had been plain to the emperor for some time that her counterpart had come to Troika space not to take up with Quintilian, but to investigate what had happened to the freighter. The fact that she’d brought Burnham along underscored how important she felt the search to be.

  Yet she’d never told Starfleet about it. About her visit to Casmarra, and Quintilian—or about any further venture to the realm of the Dromax. That had been plain from the long-distance contacts the emperor had made with Section 31 during their transit from Casmarra. In encrypted text exchanges, Leland had denied knowing anything about a past Georgiou visit; the only evidence of anything happening five years before was that time marked a change in the frequency and duration of contacts between the captain and the trader. “We’re looking at her and Burnham’s schedules during that time,” he’d written.

  Leland had also wanted to know what had happened on Casmarra, and what else they’d learned. By mutual prior agreement, the trio had decided to claim signal interference and ignore his questions, lest words like “destroyed factory” and “expulsion” lead to their recall by Cornwell or some Federation official who cared more about the Prime Directive than finding Jadama Rohn. Nor had any mention been made of their voyage to Dromax territory; with any luck, they wouldn’t stay long.

  Dax, rattled by the boulders crisscrossing space, looked anxious to leave already. “Are we even in the right place?”

  “Michael’s notes said the Dromax system,” Georgiou said, “and Gnaeus’s general is on Thirty, which has the added benefit of a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. That’s where we start.”

  Dax nodded—and looked to Finnegan in the seat beside her. “You want to—”

  “New course laid in,” he said, smiling. Then he looked back. “You’re sure we can count on what Burnham wrote? Maybe she mistranslated something.”

  “If Michael told the captain about it, she was certain of it,” Georgiou said. “And I believe her. She’s brilliant—far too smart to have made such an error.”

  “Wow.” Dax looked back at her, mouth open. “Listen to the big bad emperor being nice!”

  “The child has gotten cheeky,” Georgiou said to Finnegan.

  “It’s fine,” Dax said. “I’m just not accustomed to hearing you compliment anyone. Was Burnham somebody to you in your world?”

  “She was, until she wasn’t.” Georgiou crossed her arms behind her and looked to the side. “Here… it’s more complicated.”

  It was indeed. This universe’s Michael had experience with Captain Georgiou that was largely a mystery to the emperor. She’d been given to understand that the captain had taken Burnham under her wing; she figured the connection with the younger woman was more than a professional relationship, but less than a foster-daughter situation. It now seemed more than that. Burnham had tried briefly to befriend the emperor before Qo’noS, tried to show her a different path. How much of that was trying to force the emperor into filling the void left by the captain?

  “Here we are,” Dax said, pointing to a shabby world gray with clouds. “Moon Thirty dead ahead.”

  “Maybe more dead than not,” Finnegan said, pointing out no fewer than three boulders on trajectories taking them toward the large moon.

  Seeing the boulders soar past, Dax gripped the controls. “What should I do?”

  “You’re fine,” he said. “Stay right on course. I’d just suggest not landing where they—”

  Orange disruptor fire lanced upward from several locations on the cloud-cloaked moon. Several shots went wide, but two struck home, shattering the approaching boulders. This time, Dax did react, veering away from them—and toward the third projectile. It was a mistake. A powerful disruptor blast caught part of the rocky missile, releasing a spray of debris that struck Boyington.

  The shuttle balked, jerking back and forth as it approached Thirty’s atmosphere. In the cockpit, alarms sounded and indicators flashed as Dax struggled to regain control. “I think the thrusters are damaged!”

  “Let me take this,” Finnegan said, easing over.

  Dax put up no argument. “I think you’d better.” She surrendered the controls and the pilot seat quickly, and Georgiou quickly took Dax’s spot.

  She’d thought to take the command chair herself, but it immediately became apparent that experience and expertise would be of little help. Boyington handled sluggishly—and even more so as it pierced the upper reaches of the moon’s envelope of air. Finnegan found himself fighting to keep the shuttle stable as the sky outside turned to friction fire.

  “We’re going to crash,” Dax said.

  “You can make stupid statements, or you can strap in,” Georgiou said, punching commands that she hoped would improve the situa
tion. She wasn’t giving up just yet—but there was no returning to orbit now. Boyington was committed.

  “Look on the bright side,” Finnegan shouted over the ruckus of atmospheric entry. “At least they weren’t shooting at us.”

  33

  Moon Thirty

  DROMAX SYSTEM

  The thing about crash landings, any pilot understood, was that the medium mattered. Rock was helpful to neither vessel nor passenger. Water was kinder, depending on one’s approach to it—but it had a way of swallowing what fell into it, particularly if the vehicle in question had been punctured in any way by, for example, fragments from a mass-driver-launched meteoroid. And then there was lava. While it had some give to it, it didn’t always like to return the things it captured. Not intact, at least.

  Finnegan had learned those simple aphorisms from one of Starfleet Academy’s more experienced shuttle pilots, and while he had not internalized every lesson, this one had seemed simple enough. What he had failed to ask, however, was what to do in case of a forced landing that involved rock and water and lava—and on Moon Thirty, Finnegan had managed to find all three in close proximity.

  Like most of its lunar cousins, Thirty was a mess of terrain types due to the pull exerted by its passing neighbors. Georgiou had managed to reroute enough power to send Boyington tumbling toward the polar area and its snowpack, as opposed to the distressed equatorial regions. Finnegan’s former teacher would’ve endorsed that idea. Unfortunately, clouds hid the fact that the icecap was also rent by volcanic rifts, exposing rock in some places, and creating impromptu glacial lakes in others. Finnegan thought he should not be blamed for finding a three-kilometer-long skidway that crossed through all three, but he felt he could have done better on the order.

  Georgiou apparently agreed. “Congratulations. We’re in a volcano.”

  It wasn’t exactly true, but Finnegan wasn’t going to argue it. Boyington’s final bounce had brought it to rest in a lava bed about a kilometer from an active rift higher on a hill. He struggled to get the craft moving again. “Can’t push off. Are we sinking?”

  “Melting is more like it.”

  “Nacelles are damaged,” he said. “Can’t trust the retros.” They were running out of options. Some Starfleet shuttles had transporters; Pacifica’s did not.

  “Enough.” Georgiou snatched at his shirt and pulled him from the pilot’s chair. “Go aft and arm the hydro probes.”

  “Probes?”

  “Show me,” Dax said.

  She followed him, but Finnegan was baffled as to what Georgiou had in mind. “What are we supposed to do, ride them? The launch doors are facing down!”

  “Shut up and engage the locking mechanisms!” the emperor shouted from her seat in the pilot’s chair.

  Her command made no sense. “Locking the probes will keep the probes in the launch tubes!”

  “Just do it.”

  He and Dax had to override several computer messages angrily warning the passengers that firing probes while their thrusters were still affixed to the shuttle might not be the best idea. He could feel from the shuttle’s movement that Georgiou was urgently trying to rock Boyington back and forth, fighting to keep it from settling farther in the deadly morass.

  “Locked!”

  “Will the doors to the launch tubes open?”

  Boyington’s computer gave a report that was, at best, unsettling. “I don’t think the doors will be a problem. They’ve just melted.”

  “Hold on!” Georgiou shouted—advice that would have been more helpful, Finnegan thought, if she’d given it a second or two earlier, instead of when she did: the very second that the impact probes, six of them, launched. Or tried to launch, still attached as they were to the shuttle’s ventral tubes. Their thrust wouldn’t have been enough to free Boyington even if they’d pointed in the right direction. As Finnegan and Dax tumbled, he saw every status display at the probe station go red—

  —until Georgiou detonated the probes, at which point everything went topsy-turvy.

  Hydro probes were part of the standard shuttlecraft research package. A typical model contained water under intense high pressure, for firing into regions to test for reactions. In case the shuttle encountered a cloud like the one Farragut had found, Section 31 had armed Boyington with several carrying various liquids—but all the solutions were water based. By deploying the probes’ payloads while still attached to the shuttle, Georgiou created superheated jets of steam against the magma below, propelling the shuttle upward. She then ignited whatever thrusters still functioned at all.

  Finnegan understood all that had happened—but only in retrospect, after Boyington ceased trying to knock his and Dax’s guts out. The gyrations sent them against every bulkhead, until the vessel finally struck something solid. At last, it came to a stop, upside down and on a slant.

  He got his bearings and fumbled about. “Daxie? Are you okay?”

  Finnegan found her slumped against the overhead of the cargo hold. She was woozy, and bleeding from a knock to the forehead. “What… hit me?”

  “We just got in a fight with a shuttle.” He clambered backward—and saw out a side port what had happened. Boyington had found snow at last, having come to a skidding stop upside down on a mountainside.

  He worked his way upward, having to climb to reach the fore of the vessel. “Dax is hurt!”

  Georgiou, he saw, had problems of her own. She clung to the pilot’s chair, kicking about for a place to land without plummeting the whole way aft. In the end, she let go, sliding along the inclined overhead until she reached Finnegan amidships.

  “Cornwell won’t be happy about her shuttle,” she said, clearly winded.

  Boyington quaked. “I don’t think we’re done moving,” Finnegan said.

  It wasn’t clear to either of them whether they were just lodged on an incline leading down into a gully, or on the side of a mountain. The last thing either of them wanted to do was take their chances again in riding an avalanche. “Abandon ship,” they said to each other at the same time. Hurriedly, she collected what few supplies she could reach while Finnegan returned to Dax’s side.

  “Hang on,” he said, picking her up. “I’ll go easy. You won’t get hurt.”

  “Too… late,” Dax said, clinging to his neck as he tried to ascend the sloped overhead.

  Having opened the hatch, Georgiou straddled the doorway and offered her hand to Finnegan. “Quick, before I change my mind.”

  “I’ll never… forget… your loving-kindness,” Finnegan said, grasping for her hand. Catching it, he pulled himself and Dax upward, bringing the Trill within reach of Georgiou. The two disappeared outside the hatch. With a last doleful look around inside the shuttle, he followed.

  This part of Thirty was in night, and while the air was breathable, as they’d expected, it was also exceptionally cold. At least it beats the lava bed, he thought. In the snow outside Boyington, he found Georgiou with the shoulder bag she’d collected, tending to Dax’s injuries. Finnegan used a light from his belt to illuminate her.

  Dax winced in pain, tears in her closed eyes. “It’s… okay. I’ll be… okay.”

  “You’re not very convincing,” Georgiou said. But she tended carefully to the younger woman, adjusting a cortical stimulator from the bag and placing it on her forehead.

  Finnegan hadn’t figured Georgiou out. She’d been advertised to him as a villain, and she’d certainly acted scurrilously a time or three in their acquaintance. She’d frequently insulted him, tried to abandon him, and, with the exception of the foundry aftermath, had never come close to thanking him. But she was being decent to Dax now.

  Maybe she just thinks she’ll need us, he thought. It wasn’t clear that she would—but on a hillside on a strange planet, who knew?

  A medical tricorder out, Georgiou ran it past Dax and squinted at the readings, backlit in the many-mooned night. She frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “What?”

  “The device must be damage
d,” she said. Dax moaned, prompting her to put the tricorder away.

  Georgiou applied a hypospray. Dax’s eyes fluttered. “There you go,” the emperor said, replacing it in the bag. “Cursed with another day of survival.”

  Finnegan shone his light back at the shuttle, which had a mound of snow piled up at its lower end. “I think it’s done moving,” he said, turning back toward the hatch. “We might still use it for shelter, if nothing—”

  He never completed his sentence. Light flashed on a hillside kilometers away. An explosion ripped into the ground and sent a pillar of fire high into the night. Georgiou snagged her satchel and threw it over her shoulder. She gestured for him to help lift Dax. “Quick, before—”

  The sound from the explosion rang across the valley, setting the snow on the slope into motion. Boyington, which he was meters away from reentering, creaked and rocked. “Right!” he said, joining her beside Dax. The two got the Trill to her feet and moved with her across the incline, trying to get as much distance from the ship as possible.

  Another blast on the horizon was followed by a third explosion, just a kilometer away in the valley below. That was it for Boyington’s perch: a chunk of their hillside started moving, taking the shuttle with it.

  Finnegan couldn’t afford another look back. Not when the whine of hoverjets announced new arrivals. Gunnery platforms borne on cushions of air crested one of the far hills, racing into the valley before them.

  “Over there,” Georgiou said, pointing to an outcrop rising from the snow. The pair crunched swiftly toward it, moving Dax toward a place of cover.

  Dax looked to Finnegan, puzzled. “What’s going on?”

  “Just more fun with Georgie and Sean,” he said.

  “Let me down. You don’t have to carry me.”

  “I’m just glad you weren’t a weightlifter,” Georgiou said. The two helped Dax to sit behind the boulders and then turned to study the new arrivals, who now numbered five.