“You want me to point the guns right at the cloud of highly unstable plasma?” Weeton’s expression shifted as he spoke. “Oh. Okay.”
“Tholian ships are changing course,” called Yashae. “Sir, they’re onto us!”
“Fire!” Saru shouted out the order, hating how desperate he sounded. “All turrets!”
A stream of energy bolts spat from the transport ship’s meager weapons array, streaking past the Tholians and into the mass of the swiftly dissipating plasmatic fog. Where the blasts passed through the gaseous matter, an uncontrolled energetic reaction lit off, and sheets of fire exploded into being, spreading in flash-burn surges across the star-freighter’s wake.
Empty cargo modules tumbling through the haze were caught by the effect and torn apart, adding to the chaos. Bright jags of thermic discharge whipped across, raking over the Tholian spinners as they desperately tried to get away from the brief, fierce inferno.
On the far side of the plasma cloud, the wounded Peliar carrier seized the opportunity to add its firepower to the surprise attack. The carrier sent a spread of merculite rockets from its missile tubes to put up a wall of detonations behind the Tholian attackers. Without warning, the spinners found themselves trapped in a hell storm of plasmatic flame.
The sensors registered massive secondary surges of ignition, and Saru’s gut lurched as he realized he was looking at the Tholian ships being destroyed. He felt sick inside. But they left you no choice, said the Burnham voice in his mind.
A single wounded Tholian spinner burst out of the fire as it dissolved, scored black with damage and trailing pieces of itself. The craft bolted away at maximum impulse and raced toward the edge of sensor range.
The gathered collective on the transport ship’s bridge let out a ragged cheer as they watched the attacker flee, but Saru couldn’t summon the emotion to join with them in their shared victory. He felt hollowed out and heavy with fatigue, as if he had aged months in the blink of an eye.
“Incoming signal from the carrier,” called Yashae. “Adjutant Craea passes on a message from Admiral Tauh. He wants his daughter to know that the Cohort will be impressed by her conduct.”
“Tell him our allies deserve the credit,” said Nathal.
Saru barely registered the conversation as he and Ejah watched the viewscreen and the shrinking dot of the surviving Tholian, while all around them Federation, Gorlan, and Peliar citizens clapped each other on the back and exchanged words of thanks.
Ejah looked away, toward the secondary screen showing the wreckage left behind by the brief battle. “Creator, absolve them,” she said to herself. “This is violence done out of necessity, not desire.”
“You give an entreaty for those that would have destroyed you,” said the Kelpien.
“It is for you as well as them,” she said, looking up at him. “I know you, Saru. I know the will to go to this extreme comes hard for a being of your kind.”
He gave a brief, bitter smile. “A timid recreant, you mean?”
Ejah reached out and touched his hand. “I mean one who knows what it is to see the face of death. You went against your nature to fight for us.”
“I could do nothing else,” he said, and found he meant every word. Saru released a gasp of air, as if he had been holding it in all along. “At least we can breathe now.”
“Not yet.” His blood ran cold at the note of soft reproach in the hub’s voice. “It isn’t over.”
“Lieutenant?” Something in Weeton’s tone rang a warning in Saru’s mind, and the Kelpien briefly abandoned his station, racing across to the ensign’s side in three quick strides.
“Tell me,” he said.
Weeton couldn’t find the words, so he just pointed. The tactical scan visible on his screen showed a segment of the star system, the curve of the orbit of the sanctuary planet and indicator sigils for the Peliar ships. As Weeton manipulated the graphic to zoom out and show a larger area, the icon designating the fleeing Tholian appeared on the edge of sensor range, and beyond it the fuzzy boundary of the scattering field the aliens had deployed earlier.
Two new icons resolved at the scan’s perimeter. One was another of the spinner ships, identical in mass and configuration to the craft that had been dogging them for the last few hours. The other was at least eight times the size of the smaller vessel, and even at this distance the freighter’s sensor pallet was reading power outputs comparable to one of Starfleet’s newer Constitution-class ships or a Klingon D10 battle cruiser.
Saru couldn’t stop himself from looking up, across to where the hub was standing. Ejah was staring right at him, a terrible kind of knowing in her eyes.
It isn’t over. She silently repeated the ominous statement.
“They’re moving to regroup with the survivor.” Weeton found his voice at last. “Lieutenant, I’ve never even heard of a Tholian ship of that type before.”
“I believe that is because no one who has seen one has lived to speak of it,” Saru replied.
“That’s not very encouraging, sir,” said Weeton.
“When you have faced death as often as I have, you tend to develop a clear-eyed perception of the reality of things, Ensign.” Saru stepped away from the console and walked back toward his own panel.
The elation that had spread through the group was gone, and in its place a darker mood was settling. Against her better judgment, Ejah’s bleak foreknowledge was bleeding into the unity of the Gorlans, silencing them, and the Peliars quickly picked up on the shifting temper around them.
“What is wrong?” said Nathal.
“It seems our respite will be brief, Commander,” Saru told her. “The Tholians are regrouping for another attack. I don’t know if we can resist them a third time.” It cut him like a blade to admit it, and that inward voice of his cried out in defiance of the fate he knew they were going to face.
A flurry of possibilities rose and fell in his thoughts. Could they evacuate the refugees back to the sanctuary planet, perhaps even land the freighter? Would they be any safer down there than up here in orbit? Would the Tholians even entertain the thought of accepting a surrender after the blood that had been shed? Was there something he was missing, some shred of hope that he could grasp, some tactic he could employ to stave off destruction for just a little longer?
In Saru’s darkest nightmares, he would feel the hot breath of a ba’ul upon the bare flesh of his neck, hear the rumble of its massive beating heart, and smell the stinking raw-meat odor of its exhalations. In the dream, in the blackness of it, the moment would never end. The terrible fear in the instant before the hulking predator struck, stretched out into infinity. Death reaching for him, shrouded in the certainty that it was inescapable.
He felt that now, shaded by a great sorrow. Saru had always believed he would perish alone, but it would not be so. Ejah and the Gorlans, Nathal and her people, Weeton and Yashae, and everyone else who had put their faith in Saru, they would all follow him to the end. I am sorry, he wanted to say. This is all my fault.
“I’m getting a new hail,” said Yashae, breaking the grim hush.
“The Tholians?” Kijoh’s voice had a brief note of hopefulness, perhaps that they might still find a way out of this—but the Vok’sha shook her head.
“Not Tholian . . .” Her brow furrowed as she tried to lock down the transmission. “The scattering field is making it hard to read. It’s not a Peliar Zel signal either, I don’t . . .”
“Let me hear it,” ordered the lieutenant.
Yashae did as she was ordered, but the sound issuing from the command deck’s speakers was thick with distortion and grating echo effects.
Saru pulled up a repeater panel and saw the incoming subspace wavebands. The pattern wasn’t alien. It was familiar. “This is a . . . a Starfleet frequency!”
“Sensor contact!” called Weeton. “Another ship, emerging from behind the planet’s magnetosphere!”
“Attention,” said a voice. It was roughened by static and interferen
ce, but to Saru’s ears, it was as clear as a bolt from the blue. “This is Captain Philippa Georgiou of the Starship Shenzhou. We stand ready to assist.”
13
* * *
“We’ve cleared the planet’s mass shadow,” reported Detmer at the helm.
“Red alert, shields up!” called Commander ch’Theloh, shouldering forward over his control station. “Be ready for anything.”
Michael Burnham looked past the Andorian, out through the ports of the Shenzhou’s bridge, and into a scene of chaos. “Are we too late?”
“Detecting a large debris field in close proximity to the Peliar ships,” said Ensign Troke, the Tulian’s face shading toward azure as he spoke. “Decay particles from sustained weapon fire, traces of excited warp plasma, tritanium, and cytocrystalline fragments . . .” He trailed off. “It’s a war zone.”
Only minutes earlier, the Shenzhou’s sensors had tracked a large energy surge on the far side of the sanctuary world, but their stealthy approach keeping the planet between them and their target had rendered them unable to directly monitor the event. Now Burnham realized that what they had seen was the wake of a destructive act of desperation. She looked down at her own panel.
“Admiral Tauh’s carrier is at two-five-two mark three,” Burnham noted. “The Peliar freighter is five thousand kilometers off our starboard bow. Both ships have suffered major damage.”
Captain Georgiou acknowledged Burnham’s words with a terse nod. “Mister Gant, where are the Tholians?”
“Holding at three-zero-eight mark zero,” said the tactical officer. “Three vessels. One rather large one.”
Georgiou twisted in the command chair, shooting a look toward the communications station. “Ensign Fan, any reply to our messages?”
The young woman nodded. “I have a response. It’s Lieutenant Saru!”
“Give me holographic,” snapped the captain, and she rose up out of her seat as a shimmering, hazy image of the Kelpien formed out of the air in the middle of the bridge.
Burnham couldn’t help herself and stepped forward to get a better look at the errant officer. Saru seemed pale and worn out, but still he stood stiffly to attention as he realized his commander was addressing him. “Captain. I am very pleased to see you.”
“You may come to think otherwise, Lieutenant,” Georgiou said tersely. “Let’s cut straight to the heart of this. What the hell happened out here?”
Saru opened and closed his mouth, then launched into an explanation. “Some of the Gorlans compelled us to assist them in hijacking this transport ship. We recovered their people from the planet below, then regained control of the vessel from them shortly before Peliar reinforcements arrived . . . and so did the Tholians. We have been attempting to resist them.”
“So, you go off book and start a war with the Tholian Assembly?” Georgiou shook her head. “I’ll say this for you, Saru, you don’t aim low.”
Saru looked chastened. “Actually, they opened fire first.”
“I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that,” said ch’Theloh.
“There is,” admitted Saru, “which I will cover in a detailed report if we survive the next few minutes. The Tholians are massing for another attack.”
“He’s right,” said Burnham, watching the sensor feed on her screen. “The spinners are moving into battle posture.”
“Fan, any contact from the Tholians?” said the captain.
“Negative,” replied the communications officer. “I’m hailing them on all general frequencies, but they’re ignoring us.”
Georgiou gave her exec a nod, and ch’Theloh ordered Gant to power up the Shenzhou’s weapons systems. “All right, Mister Saru. You’ve done enough for one day, I think.” The captain waved him aside. “Get that ship and those people away from the conflict zone. We’ll cover your retreat.”
“Retreat to where, Captain?” said Saru. “There’s nowhere we can escape to.”
“Detmer, put us between the Tholian approach and the star-freighter!” Georgiou grimaced as Burnham saw the same harsh truth behind Saru’s words that the captain had. “Gant, pick your targets!”
Saru was still speaking. He leaned forward, imploring them. “We can still help you!”
“How?” said Burnham.
The Kelpien shot a nervous look off to the right, beyond the range of the holographic pickup. “Let us just say the Gorlans have a unique predictive advantage.”
Georgiou hesitated, and Burnham touched her arm. “Captain, we’re seriously outmatched here. Any additional edge has to be useful.”
“Agreed,” said Georgiou, after a moment. “Saru, tie in with Lieutenant Gant and feed him whatever information you have.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Tholian ships are accelerating to attack speed!” called Januzzi from the ops console. “Two spinner-type vessels, one unknown cruiser-scale craft.”
“Reading prefire emissions from multiple particle-beam weapons,” added Troke.
“One last try,” muttered the captain, and she made a gesture to Ensign Fan. “Mary, open a channel.” Georgiou took a breath as the long, skeletal mass of the Peliar freighter slipped by beneath the Shenzhou’s bridge. “Attention, Tholian vessels. We have no desire to escalate this situation any further. Deactivate your weapons and fall back, and we will do the same. We can discuss—”
“They’re going to fire, break off!” shouted Saru. His hologram crackled and abruptly vanished.
Burnham’s hand came up to shield her eyes as a savage burst of red light flashed across the Shenzhou’s bow.
“Hard to port!” Ch’Theloh barked out the command and Detmer complied, veering off as a punishing salvo of energy bolts crashed through the space that the starship had just occupied.
A glancing strike clipped the deflectors along the bottom of the engine nacelles as the Shenzhou banked like a starfighter, straining the ship’s inertial dampers to the limit. Burnham grabbed at her console to steady herself as the vessel shuddered.
Through a port in the deck of the bridge, she saw a silvery shape streak past as the leading ship—one of the arrow-like spinners—crossed their course in a swift, jousting pass. More pulses of crimson light flashed, and Detmer hauled the ship around to avoid them.
“So much for talking,” growled ch’Theloh.
Georgiou nodded grimly. “Fire aft torpedo!”
“Torpedo away!” Gant stabbed at a control and released a glowing missile into the Shenzhou’s wake, sending the photon warhead streaking after the spinner.
Burnham saw the detonation as the torpedo crashed against the Tholian ship’s deflectors, knocking it off course but doing only minimal damage.
“Bring us around and pursue.” The first officer stalked across to Detmer’s station. “They’ll find we’re not so easy a target as some bulk hauler.”
The view through the forward screens swung around as the Shenzhou pivoted and brought its bow to bear on the spinner. “He’s trying to shake us off,” said Burnham. She read the frantic jolts of thrust from the Tholian’s impulse drives as the vessel’s crew attempted to extend away from the Starfleet vessel.
Ch’Theloh was right. Up until now, the Tholians had only engaged the heavy, slow Peliar craft in combat. Facing off against a Federation ship of the line, even an aging boat like a Walker class, was a very different matter.
“Target phasers on his engine coils and fire!” Georgiou called the order and Gant obeyed, but the shots went wide as the Tholian suddenly rolled out from target lock.
“They’re trying to pull us away from the main engagement.” Burnham saw the tactic unfolding in her thoughts and spoke without thinking. “Divide our forces.”
“All the more reason to disable him quickly,” said ch’Theloh.
“Captain Georgiou!” Saru’s hologram reappeared across the bridge as the interrupted communications link was reestablished. “Your target will bank to port, then snap starboard . . . in ten seconds!”
“Wher
e is he getting this?” said the Andorian.
“Does it matter, sir?” Burnham shot back. “It was right before.”
“Good point,” agreed the captain. “Tactical! Photon torpedoes, proximity detonation, narrow spread, starboard quadrant!” She pointed out through the viewer. “On the mark!”
“Burnham, sound the count,” said ch’Theloh.
“Seven. Six. Five.” She called out the numbers, and on cue, the Tholian spinner made a sudden, sharp banking motion across the blackness.
“Target going hard to port!” called Detmer.
“Four. Three. Two.” Burnham’s breath caught in her throat as the Tholian veered back in the direction it had come, tumbling wildly to starboard. “He’s reversing course!”
Gant didn’t need to hear the order again. “Torpedo spread away!”
This time, three streaks of light burst from the launch tubes beneath the Shenzhou’s primary hull, seemingly aimed straight at empty space. But the fleeing spinner ship turned straight into the path of the photon torpedoes and their detonation surge as the warheads lit off in a fire chain.
“Direct hit!” Troke punched the air with a balled fist.
The Tholian craft lost its shields and then its power as the antimatter blast ripped into its engines and crippled the alien warship. It spun off into an end-over-end tumble.
“They’re out of play,” Georgiou said briskly. “Helm, bring us about. We still have work to do.”
Burnham went to her station as the Shenzhou turned back into the fight, pulling up the sensor feed to track the other two Tholians. The second spinner was swinging wide of the engagement and moving slowly, likely because of damage sustained in an earlier exchange of fire, but the larger cruiser was homing in on the wounded warship.
The Peliar warship launched what was left of its autonomous fighters, but the Tholians picked them off almost as soon as they left their silos. The Tholian cruiser was a triad of great jagged talons, with a primary hull formed from an elongated tetrahedron and two arching claws rising and falling from its dorsal and ventral surfaces. Hard, blue-white glows gathered at their tips, throbbing as they emitted lethal threads of phased energy. A light brushed over the length of the warship, seeding a line of orange fireballs behind it.
Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself Page 25