The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  There was an elegant solution to this; she would magnanimously accept Riker’s surrender, have him lower the Titan’s shields—and then obliterate the ship.

  After all, she thought, Romulan mercy—if there ever was such a thing—is only for Romulans.

  “All ships hold fire. Let the human speak,” she ordered.

  The command deck’s holographic viewer became a window on the bridge of the Titan. Helek noted obvious signs of internal damage on the walls and consoles with open satisfaction, and her eye was briefly caught by the face of a non-Terran at one of the forward stations. The alien woman glared at Helek with the naked ire of someone who hated her, and she wondered what she had done to her to forge such wrath.

  Riker stepped forward into view. He was haggard, but held firm. “Major. This can’t go on. I implore you, cease your attack. Call off your dogs.”

  She smirked at the human idiom. “What do you offer?”

  Riker frowned. “Offer?”

  Is he being deliberately obtuse? Helek wondered if it might be a ploy of some kind, a way to stall for time. “What do you offer in return for your life, Captain? Tell me what you will give me and I shall consider accepting your surrender.”

  “Ours…?” Riker shrugged and then, to her annoyance, he actually chuckled, giving his crew an indulgent smile. “I think there’s been a miscommunication here, Major. I don’t want to discuss the terms of my surrender. I’m here to accept yours.”

  Helek was briefly lost for words, but she recovered quickly. “It appears your arrogance is matched only by your stupidity.” She rose from the command chair, glaring back at the human through the holoscreen. “I intended to destroy your scow no matter what bargain you might have made, but now I will do so slowly.” She showed her teeth. “I will take my time. I will hear you plead for your life.”

  “Beg to differ,” said Riker, the threats rolling off him. At his side, Helek saw a human female with dark hair throw him a nod. “Last chance, Major. Have your ships stand down and let the Jazari be on their way.”

  When Helek spoke again, every word she uttered was a razor. “Do you really think you can defeat us?”

  “Do you really think we won’t try?” He turned away, moving back to his chair. “Ask Commander Medaka. Ask someone who has fought in real battles. Then maybe you’ll understand.” The human gestured to one of his crew and the channel closed, the viewscreen flicking back to the stars and the ships outside.

  “He dares…?” Helek’s long fingers contracted into fists. A distant voice in the back of her mind warned her that Riker was a clever foe, playing on her flaws, digging in the dagger where he saw the chinks in her armor.

  But that voice was drowned out by the snarls of the zealot inside Helek, the believer empowered by the apocalyptic vision of the Admonition, the warrior fanatic of the Zhat Vash. Had she believed in such things as gods, Helek would have sworn her mission was a divine one—a mission where all horrors were permitted.

  She sucked in a breath, preparing to bellow a kill command, but that dithering Garidian fool at the sensors station babbled out a warning.

  “Multiple target detections across the hull of the Jazari hulk!” Decurion Benem’s long head bobbed in agitation. “They’re launching dozens of metallic objects!”

  Helek saw it now. Along the line of the Jazari ship’s forked exterior, tiny points of light were emerging from hidden hatches, streaking away into the vacuum. “Identify!” she demanded. “They can’t be weapons…”

  “They’re not photon torpedoes, not missiles,” said Kort. “I’m detecting energy readings at their core, but not enough for an active warhead.”

  “They are drones,” said Maian.

  As she watched, the orb-shaped objects raced toward the Titan, expanding into a wide shoal of flickering dots. “It’s a trick,” she hissed. “All ships, power to disruptors, destroy those things!”

  “Targeting lock is inconclusive,” Kort replied. “The objects are generating a scattering field.”

  “Then sweep the area with wide-angle fire!” Helek spat the command at the combat officer, her ire building. Would she have to lead these fools on the bridge by the hand through every single order?

  It was then that she noticed the light. Her shadow, falling across the bulkhead behind her, grew sharper and more defined. When Helek looked back at the viewer, she saw a wall of white forming in space, obscuring the Titan and the Jazari vessel. The drones were projecting a photonic barrier of incredible, blinding intensity. From the back of the bridge, she heard Dasix let out an agonized screech as the Reman engineer’s light-sensitive eyes burned with pain.

  “Filter that image,” Helek ordered. “Do it now!”

  “Unable to comply, the effect is present across all spectra,” said Maian as the viewing screen dimmed and brightened again and again, unable to dampen out the adapting surge of energy. “Not just visual, but every sensory band…”

  “Our escorts are falling back,” reported Hade-Tah. “They are suffering the same effects.”

  “Viewer off!” Helek’s words were finally obeyed, and the bridge was suddenly dark. She loomed over Sublieutenant Kort and stabbed a finger in the air. “Fire an all-aspect disruptor spread! Fire blind if we must, but do it now!”

  “But the other ships are in our weapons arc—”

  Her patience snapped and she shoved him away from his panel, slamming the heel of her hand onto the firing pad.

  * * *

  “Romulan ships are retreating in poor order,” said Keru. “It’s working!”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Vale. Riker’s first officer had privately admitted to him that she had her doubts about the captain’s ploy to wrong-foot their attackers, but now she saw the effectiveness of it.

  The intelligence controlling the Jazari drone orbs was communicating directly with Livnah’s console in real time, feeding the energy frequency shifts to the Titan as the light wall blazed against the darkness. Matching the ship’s viewer to the ever-changing photonic field state allowed the Titan’s visual feed to operate unaffected, as did their sensors.

  “Lieutenant Cantua, stay behind the drone net,” noted Riker. “Tactical, keep our shields at maximum. As soon as the Romulans figure out the blinding effect has a limited range, they’ll extend away and we’ll lose our advantage.”

  “Captain, all shuttle bays report ready.” McCreedy relayed the data from her screen. “We’re clear to launch.”

  Riker turned to Vale. “Over to you, Number One.”

  “Aye, sir.” She swiveled the console at her side and her fingers raced across the panel. Green indicators blinked on as the shuttlecrafts Mance, Marsalis, and Ellington left the Titan and powered away toward the enemy ships.

  Each craft was unmanned, run by the same software subroutines that Cantua had used days earlier to transfer the Jazari diplomatic party to their generation ship. “All shuttles answering remote control.”

  “Othrys is firing!” Keru called out a warning as the Romulan warbird released a wild barrage of disruptor bolts in every direction across their forward weapons arc.

  Most of the blasts went wide, but Riker saw several of the orb drones destroyed by random strikes, and some hits even clipped the lead enforcer cruiser, knocking it off course.

  Working the shuttles in unison, Vale turned the Ellington on an intercept heading toward the damaged Tal Shiar ship, the Mance toward its companion, and the Marsalis directly at the warbird. The gamble was that amid the chaos of the energy put out by the drones, the smaller, fast-moving shuttles would be difficult to spot, and able to get close to the attacking vessels.

  “You know the drill,” Riker noted. “Target engines only, Chris. We want to disable them.”

  “The Tal Shiar would not grant us that courtesy,” said Livnah with a growling snort.

  “The Tal Shiar don’t value life,” said Cantua, and the captain saw her cast a sorrowful glance toward the empty ops station at her side. “We’re better than
that.”

  On the screen, the Ellington was first to break through the photon field and the lead enforcer reacted, spinning on thrusters to bring its guns to bear on the shuttle. Vale set it into a wild, jinking evasive pattern, swooping beneath the cruiser’s black, serrated hull, firing a point-blank phaser blast into its portside warp nacelle.

  “Direct hit!” called Keru, punching the air. “That blew out their entire intercooler array—I’m reading massive mains power loss across the whole ship!”

  The lead enforcer’s running lights flickered and dimmed; it was dead in the water, but there was no time to celebrate.

  Riker watched as Vale shifted her focus to the Mance as it bore down on the other Tal Shiar ship, seeking the same target that had neutralized the first. The Mance responded nimbly, diving like a starfighter as the second enforcer opened fire, sensing the presence of the incoming shuttle.

  “Word from the Jazari,” called Livnah. “Drones will lose power in sixty seconds!”

  Riker acknowledged the comment just as a glancing disruptor bolt clipped the Mance and sheared off its starboard drive nacelle.

  The shuttle twisted into a spiraling motion, bleeding fire into the vacuum, and Vale made a split-second decision. The commander put the Mance on a collision course with the Tal Shiar vessel, and guided it all the way to a fiery end, striking the Romulan ship where its wingtip connected to its warp engine.

  The shuttle was obliterated in the impact, but the blast sheared off a full quarter of the enforcer’s wing, rendering it immobile.

  Another flash of fire caught Riker’s eye and he grimaced as the remote link to the Marsalis went dark. While their focus had been elsewhere, the Othrys had recovered and burnt the third shuttle out of the sky before it could close the distance.

  “Tal Shiar ships both inoperative, one target still remaining, damaged but active,” said Keru. “That’s some nice flying, Commander.”

  Livnah counted down the last few seconds of their distraction. “Drones offline in three… two… one!” As the last word left her mouth, the wall of coruscating light faded away and the drones became cold, dead metal.

  “Number One, get the Ellington on board.” Riker turned away, back to Keru. “Ranul, open a channel.” The captain took a breath and then spoke again. “Attention, Romulan vessels. We have no desire to prolong this conflict any further. Back off and let the Jazari go on their way. We are willing to render assistance to you if you comply. Respond.”

  Keru’s broad face creased in a deep frown. “Captain, I’m reading new energy buildups on both the Tal Shiar ships.”

  “They’re powering weapons?” Vale caught sight of the damaged vessels on the main viewer. “They’re in no state to keep fighting.”

  “That is not their intention, Commander.” Livnah’s tone became grave. “Those ships have unlocked their singularity cores. What Mister Keru is seeing is the runaway effect of an overload.”

  Riker took an urgent step forward, suddenly aware of what was going to happen next, and desperate to forestall it. “Titan to Romulan vessels, stand down! This doesn’t have to end with—”

  In quick succession, powerful flashes of twin destructive force bloomed around the enforcer cruisers and consumed them. For a brief moment, the compact, captive black hole at the heart of each ship’s power core was uncaged, and in the instant before they collapsed under their own supergravity, the hulls of the vessels imploded. Riker felt the destruction like a gut punch, and for a moment, it robbed him of his breath.

  McCreedy broke the long silence that followed. “Romulans never surrender. They must have believed we would take their ships.”

  Riker scowled, giving voice to his disgust. “I’m sick of this bloodshed, and for what? It’s driven by hate and fear, and nothing more.”

  “They do hate us,” Vale said quietly. “They do fear us. And this is what that gets us, an enmity that neither side is ever going to bridge.”

  The captain shook his head. “I refuse to accept that.”

  “Aspect change on the warbird,” called Keru. “The Othrys is moving into an attack posture.”

  “Major Helek isn’t going to give us that option,” said Vale.

  * * *

  Vale felt the weight of her pronouncement like lead in her chest. As much as she maintained the outward aspect of the watchful, hawkish second-in-command to Riker’s open and companionable captain, deep down she was an optimist, and she wanted to see the best in the universe. It was the reason she had joined Starfleet.

  But Helek’s brutality and the complicity of the Tal Shiar made it hard to find any thread of hope in all this. The confrontation could only end in destruction, and Vale was not willing to let Titan fall and the Jazari die, just to satisfy someone else’s hatred.

  “Power building on the warbird,” said Livnah. “Not a self-destruct this time,” she added quickly.

  “It’s the plasma reservoir,” added Keru. “Othrys is charging their primary weapon.”

  “That thing mauled us all to hell last time it hit,” said Vale. “Helek won’t rest until she finishes what she started.”

  “I know.” Riker took a breath. “So we have to stop her in her tracks.”

  “I have an approach, but you won’t like it,” she told him.

  “I like all your plans,” he replied, forcing a smile. “Go ahead, Commander.”

  Vale rose from her seat. “Helm, put us on an intercept course with the warbird, bow to bow, full impulse.”

  “Full impulse, intercept course, aye.” Cantua took Titan forward, increasing speed in a matter of seconds. Ahead of them, the Romulan ship seemed to swoop toward them and grow larger, becoming a predator hawk diving at its prey.

  “One flaw in those Romulan plasma weapons,” Vale explained. “They need to reach a minimum criticality after launch to become fully lethal… But if we go right down their throat, get as close as we can before they fire…”

  “We can take the hit and push through.” Riker took that in, then called out, “Chief Engineer! Reinforce the forward shields, give them everything you can.”

  “For the record, I’d just like to say I don’t like this plan.” McCreedy carried out her orders nonetheless, and the bridge’s illuminator dimmed slightly as power was rerouted.

  “So noted.” The captain settled back into the command chair, fixing his eyes on the Romulan ship. “Here it comes.”

  Vale saw the malevolent glow building in the prefire chamber on the Othrys’s bow.

  “You are sure about this, Commander?” Cantua’s voice was low.

  “If I’m wrong, we won’t have time to worry about it.” She gave the Denobulan a pat on the shoulder. “Maintain heading, Lieutenant.”

  Vale dashed back across the bridge, falling into her seat as Riker called a warning to brace for impact. The Othrys was moving, and perhaps the warbird’s helmsman had an inkling of what the Titan was doing, but the moment came and it was too late to veer away.

  Fire the shade of volcanic lava blasted out from the warbird’s prow, and Vale momentarily imagined it like some star-born dragon breathing flames upon them, the challenging knights.

  The plasma bolt struck the forward shields and Titan lurched alarmingly. The blow rattled the teeth in Vale’s head and she tasted blood in her mouth, as if she’d been punched in the face. The automatic safety restraint across her waist stopped the commander from pitching onto the deck, but still she hung on for dear life.

  Jumping-jack sparks flew from panels around the bridge as overload breakers blew, and acrid fumes stinking of flash-burnt polymers stung her nostrils.

  Someone cried out—it sounded like Livnah, making an animal noise that was more fury than it was pain, as if the science officer were giving voice to the Titan’s distress.

  Then the fire faded and the ship righted itself, angling away as the Othrys veered into a steep climb to avoid a direct collision. The ships passed so close to each other that the edges of their deflectors touched, the faint gli
mmers of Titan’s battered shields burning weakly against those of the Romulan warbird.

  “This is it,” Vale called. “Keru, target impulse engines and fire at point-blank range!”

  “Firing!” The Trill was ready for the order, and he sent lances of collimated energy through the enemy shields and into the hull of the Othrys, where the other ship’s impulse grids glowed orange red.

  Molten gobs of tritanium and sparking flares erupted from the warbird’s belly as the Titan passed beneath the Romulan vessel. Vale saw secondary-effect power surges run wild over the metallic wings, crawling jags of lightning burning out vital systems as they spread. A tremor went through the Othrys, and she knew that the hit had been a palpable one.

  “Their sublight drives are dead.” Livnah gave the report with an air of triumph in her voice. “They are adrift.”

  “Helm, extend away,” said the captain. “Put some distance between us in case Major Helek decides to follow her Tal Shiar friends to martyrdom.”

  Vale watched the damaged warbird grow smaller. “I didn’t get the impression she’d give up her life for anything.”

  Riker frowned. “I’m not so sure. Fanaticism takes many forms, Commander. I know that hatred when I see it.”

  “Sir…” Ranul Keru’s brow furrowed as a tone sounded from his console. “We’re being hailed by the Othrys. It’s Helek. Captain, she’s asking to speak to you. Privately, commander to commander.”

  Vale couldn’t help but let out a snort of bitter laughter. “Didn’t we just do that whole song and dance?”

  “No question she’s stalling for time,” said Keru.

  “No question,” agreed Riker, “but I still have to listen.” He retracted his restraints and stood up. “Commander Vale, you have the conn. Relay Helek’s signal directly to my ready room.”

  “Captain…” Livnah’s voice held a warning note. “That subspace channel will not be secure.”

  “So you know what to do,” said Riker. “Be ready.”

  “Understood.”

  “She’s going to try something, sir,” Vale said quietly. “She’s Tal Shiar. Schemes and plots are what they do all day long.”