by David Mack
“Let’s just say I suspect this party is about to get a lot more crowded.”
Ten
* * *
As encouraging as it was to be flanked by two security officers as experienced and reliable as Ranul Keru and Lieutenant Pava ek’Noor sh’Aqabaa, Will Riker still found the most reassuring companion on a dangerous away mission to be a fully charged phaser in his hand. He checked the weapon one last time as the runabout landed with a muted thump. It was set for heavy stun, broad beam—ideal for facing multiple targets in close quarters.
His breath felt warm and close inside the helmet of his environmental suit, which he found a touch claustrophobic in spite of its wraparound faceplate and excellent peripheral sight lines. When he looked back at the rest of the away team, he saw their identities superimposed above their heads, thanks to his helmet’s holographic heads-up display. Keru and sh’Aqabaa checked the power levels on their phaser rifles, while computer engineer Lieutenant Holor Sethe and cryptolinguist Ensign Y’Lira Modan were more interested in the statuses of their tricorders, both of which seemed to be on the fritz—further casualties of the intense radiation bathing the desolate moon. The two scientists, like the rest of the away team, also carried type-2 phasers, though neither the Cygnian man nor the Selenean woman looked comfortable bearing weapons.
I just hope our phasers work down here, Riker worried.
Sarai locked down the runabout’s flight controls, then got up and secured her own helmet to her suit as she moved aft to join the rest of the team. Keru handed her a rifle. “We’re less than half a kilometer from the Husnock ship’s nearest entry point,” she said over the team’s encrypted comm channel, “but watch your step—it’s all downhill from here, and it gets pretty steep.”
“Copy that,” Keru said. “Mind if I take point, Commander?”
“You read my mind,” Sarai said. “Pava, stay behind the admiral. Sethe, Modan, you follow Pava, and I’ll bring up the rear. Any questions?”
“One,” Riker said. “Who has the marshmallows?” A quick study of the others’ blank expressions confirmed none of them had understood his cultural reference to camping. The downside to a diverse crew. Disappointed, he frowned. “Never mind. Move out.”
Keru opened the runabout’s port-side hatch and led the team out of the small starship. Just as Sarai had warned, the ground outside was rocky and pitched at a sharp angle. It took Riker a moment to find his footing and settle into a careful stride behind Keru. Small rocks and bits of debris tumbled down the incline ahead of Riker, and more rolled past him as the rest of the away team filed out of the Nechako. He took a moment between steps to appreciate the barren splendor of the moonscape—the sky streaked with emerald and magenta, the breathtaking curve of the gas giant’s rings arcing above the horizon—but the treacherous footing forced him to turn his eyes back to the slope in front of him.
Several dozen meters later he and the others were walking atop the fissured hull of the crashed Husnock vessel. Its gunmetal-gray exterior was composed of interlocking boxy shapes and hard corners, a far cry from the graceful curves of Federation starships.
Near the designated entry point, Keru held up a fist, signaling the team to halt. “Commander Sarai? You might want to have a look at this.”
The Titan’s executive officer moved forward to join Keru. Impelled by curiosity, Riker followed her, leaving sh’Aqabaa to guard Sethe and Modan. When Riker and Sarai reached Keru, he pointed inside the gash in the hull, using his palm beacon to illuminate details. “Interiors look intact,” he said. “But this is a big ship. Where do we go once we’re inside?”
Riker squinted into the shadowy corridors. Footprints were everywhere. Then he pointed at something on one of the interior bulkheads. “Put some light on that.”
Keru trained the beam of his palm beacon on a crudely painted symbol. “What’s that?”
Sarai leaned in for a closer look. “What the—? Is that—”
“Nausicaan?” Riker cut in. “Yes, I’m pretty sure it is.”
The XO and the security chief exchanged dubious looks. Keru turned an incredulous look at Riker. “They marked their path? It can’t be that easy, can it?”
“It’s Nausicaans,” Riker said. “So yes, I’m pretty sure it is.”
Sarai keyed in adjustments to her suit, and her faceplate became dark and nonreflective. “No palm beacons,” she said. “They’ll give away our position. Switch to UV and infrared, and engage motion sensors. Filter out our own signals so we don’t get distracted by false positives.”
The rest of the away team did as Sarai had ordered. Sethe’s catlike stare disappeared as his faceplate darkened, as did Modan’s golden skin and bulbous turquoise eyes. Keru’s dermal spots and sh’Aqabaa’s blue antennae vanished behind their own synthetic matte-black veils.
Riker adjusted the settings on his suit’s faceplate for spectrum-enhanced vision, and to eliminate unwanted reflections. At once the corridor inside the ship became clearly visible, rendered in frost-blue twilight. He was pleased to note that the Nausicaans’ painted markers shimmered, making them easy to spot. “Ready,” he said. “Resume formation and proceed.”
The away team skulked through the dusty, tilted passageways of the decades-dead starship. Twisted bulkheads jutted into long corridors. Messes of cable dangled like jungle vines from ruptured overhead panels. Though there were no bodies—the Douwd’s genocide had made certain to wipe every last trace of the Husnock from existence—Riker felt as if the ghosts of the crew whispered in the ship’s darkest recesses.
It’s only the wind, he told himself. He almost believed it.
Deeper inside the ship there was less dust, which made it harder to find footprints. Fortunately, the Nausicaans’ pathfinder markings remained crisp and easy to follow.
Keru halted the team at an intersection of corridors. He motioned for everyone to kneel and take a moment of rest. “There’s a break in the bulkhead a few meters in front of us. I’m reading fresh heat signatures from the other side.”
Sarai asked, “Any chance there might be safe alternative approaches? Some way we could flank them? Surround them?”
“Maybe,” Keru said. “I see a passage that might let us get above them, and have some cover. If we split into two groups, we could pin them down and negotiate for the prisoners.”
“Sounds good,” Riker said. “You and Pava take the high ground. Signal us when you’re in position. Commander Sarai, you and I will stay with Sethe and Modan.”
“Aye, sir,” Sarai said. “Pava, Keru, move out.”
The two security officers broke from the group and stole away into the darkness, both moving in low crouches with rifles at the ready. Riker watched the pair slip around a corner, and then he turned to Sarai. “As we humans like to say: here’s where the fun begins.”
Years of practice and more simulations than Keru could even begin to count—they all had made possible a moment such as this. Prowling toward an armed and hostile enemy force, the Trill kept his breathing slow and even, his hands steady; he felt light on his feet. True, the last of those sensations probably had more to do with the moon’s 0.71 standard gravity, but it helped him feel ready to face whatever came next.
Moving at his side was sh’Aqabaa. The Andorian shen seemed as cool and collected as he felt. Together they advanced up a narrow rampway to a ring-shaped level that was open on its interior side, forming a circular balcony that looked down into a space dominated by a machine composed of dozens of vertical pipes closely packed together. Voices and scraping noises of activity emanated from the level below, the same area in which Keru had detected heat signatures. He paused near the half wall that separated the ring level from the space beyond, and peeked over it. Underneath, on the lowest level, were four prisoners and four armed Nausicaans.
Keru ducked back to cover behind the wall and spoke softly as he informed the away team, “Visual confirmation. Four hostiles, four hostages. Hostiles are well armed. Hostages are in a crossfi
re zone. Relaying coordinates now.” Signaling sh’Aqabaa with gestures, he added, “Moving to secure a better vantage for targeting. Stand by.”
He and sh’Aqabaa stayed low as they crept along the ring’s edge in search of a better angle from which to attack and provide supporting fire for their teammates on the lower level. Then a clenched fist from sh’Aqabaa halted Keru. She directed his attention to a shape in the darkness. It was hard to spot—its heat signature was muted, and it all but blended into the junk cluttering the deck around it. Then it moved, and Keru recognized the outline of a rifle.
“Heads up. We have a camouflaged shooter on the upper level. Moving to neutralize.”
The two security officers moved apart as they circled behind the concealed sniper. In less than a minute they had the drop on him, one of them on each of his rear flanks. Keru signaled sh’Aqabaa to move in, and to watch out for traps guarding the shooter’s back. They both closed to within three meters of the sniper and halted.
The longer Keru watched the sniper, the more he wondered what the shooter was doing. Whoever it was, the rifleman wasn’t guarding the Nausicaans—if anything, he appeared to be targeting them, sighting them from exactly the position Keru would have chosen to use.
Deciding it was time to find out what the hell was going on, Keru trained his rifle’s targeting sensor on the sniper’s environmental suit.
If his gear’s as fancy as it looks, he’ll know we’ve got the drop on him.
The sniper tensed, then lowered the muzzle of his weapon. He turned and looked back at Keru and sh’Aqabaa. Through the shooter’s broad faceplate, Keru recognized the flattened nose, sharp teeth, and enormous ears of a pissed-off Ferengi. The Ferengi held up an empty hand and pointed at his helmet, clearly seeking permission to adjust some setting or other. Keru nodded once but kept his weapon trained on the stranger.
The Ferengi tweaked a setting on his helmet—and then his nasal voice issued from Keru’s transceiver: “What do you think you’re doing here, Starfleet?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing. Put down your weapon.”
“Drop yours.” The Ferengi resumed his targeting of the Nausicaans. “I’m working.”
The Ferengi’s attitude had clearly ruffled sh’Aqabaa, who inched closer to him, her finger tensed against her rifle’s trigger. “Drop your weapon. You’re under arrest.”
“Get lost. You have no jurisdiction here.”
He was right, which Keru worried would only make sh’Aqabaa angrier—and then the whole situation became moot. Targeting sensors in Keru’s own suit lit up—
He and sh’Aqabaa both dived to cover as disruptor blasts exploded against the junk around them. One of the Nausicaans from below had come up to the ring level—whether on a routine patrol or drawn by their confrontation with the Ferengi, Keru had no idea—and now the balcony had become a shooting gallery.
Keru returned fire, forcing the Nausicaan to dart for shelter. Then sh’Aqabaa joined the fray—as did the Ferengi, who harassed the Nausicaan and even winged the hulking brute before they all lost sight of him in the wreckage.
More weapons fire screeched and shrieked down below. Smoke and flames climbed upward, and so many voices overlapped on the transceiver channel—Riker’s, Sarai’s, the Ferengi’s, sh’Aqabaa’s—that Keru had no idea what any of them were saying.
Then the deck underneath him and sh’Aqabaa collapsed, and the two of them plunged into free fall, through a billowing black cloud and tongues of flame, and the only voice Keru heard was his own, bellowing obscenities all the way down to an abrupt and painful landing.
Listening to the argument between Keru and the shooter he and sh’Aqabaa had confronted on the upper level, Sarai fought to resist the temptation to intrude on the conversation. She had no idea how the interloper had patched into their secure frequency, and that troubled her. Better not give him any more intel about our numbers than he already has, she decided. Then she saw Riker signal her, Sethe, and Modan to remain silent. I guess the admiral feels the same way.
She heard movement on the other side of the bulkhead. Was it the Nausicaans or the prisoners? Routine shifting from one task to another, or taking positions for a firefight? Maybe I should move up to scout the positions of the Nausicaans and their hostages.
Sarai suggested her plan to Riker in gestures. He rejected it with a raised palm that meant stay put. She hated doing nothing, especially in a scenario such as this, when anything—
Disruptor fire, then the whine of phasers. The Nausicaans bellowed orders, the prisoners cried out in alarm, and more disruptor blasts resounded inside the derelict ship.
Riker snapped, “Keru! Report!”
His order overlapped Sarai’s—“Keru! Pava! Talk to me!”
Something exploded outside the Nausicaans’ perimeter, then came the thunder of collapsing decks and buckling spaceframe. Upper decks slammed down into the corridor, kicking up dust followed by thick smoke. Wild volleys of disruptor fire screamed out of the darkness and caromed off the bulkheads, raining sparks onto Sarai and the rest of the away team.
Her instinct was to shoot back, but she held her fire. There were unarmed civilians in harm’s way, innocent lives she had been tasked to defend and liberate. As another disruptor pulse ripped past her, she remembered her mistake from many years earlier, when, as a field operative for Starfleet Intelligence, she had fired her weapon in a crisis and struck a child bystander instead of her target. It was a fatal blunder that had haunted her ever since, a regret she would take to her grave. It was not an error she would let herself make again.
Another explosion filled the corridor with shrapnel. Smoky bits tore into the legs of her environmental suit, which tightened the seals at her thighs to prevent the loss of her air. Sarai flattened herself to the deck and retrieved a canister of emergency patch aerosol from her utility belt, and she sprayed it over the rips in her suit, closing them in seconds. Her suit sensed the repairs and normalized the pressure around her legs.
Riker kneeled beside her and fired off a few salvos of suppressing fire in the Nausicaans’ direction. He glanced toward Sarai. “Are you hurt?”
“Scrapes and bruises,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Squatting low behind them, Modan and Sethe had drawn their phasers but seemed reluctant to fire without express orders to do so. Sethe asked, “Orders, sirs? Do we fall back?”
“No,” Riker said. “The mission’s not done. And we don’t leave our people behind. Modan, can your tricorder get any kind of a reading on the Nausicaans or the hostages?”
The Selenean woman activated her tricorder, whose oscillating tones were audible even through the insulation of their environmental suits. “Yes, sir. A faint signal, but it’s clear.” She looked up and around. “The ship’s hull must be absorbing some of the radiation.”
“Thank heaven for small mercies,” the admiral muttered. “Range and bearing?”
Modan read from her tricorder. “Same coordinates Keru sent: sixteen meters, bearing zero-one-five mark one-one-eight.”
“Good work,” Riker said. He looked at Sarai. “How do you want to play it?”
“Head-on,” she said. “They aren’t moving, so we’ll go to them. You and I hug the walls and advance while Modan and Sethe lay down suppressing fire. Then we’ll cover them while they move up to join us.” She faced the science specialists. “Got it?” Two nods of affirmation, so she checked that her phaser rifle was set for heavy stun. “Ready.”
“We go on three,” Riker said. “As soon as Sarai and I break from cover, you fire. Keep firing until we reach cover at the intersection.” He checked his own weapon, then tensed to run. “One. Two. Three!”
Sarai and Riker sprang from cover and sprinted down the corridor. Phaser beams sliced through the air between them, and disruptor pulses screamed past from ahead of them. They both laid down their own barrages of suppressing fire, not really aiming so much as blanketing the end of the passageway in an act of area denial. They tum
bled in unison behind a dead husk of a machine at the intersection. Both of them gasped for breath—but only for half a second before they popped up again to resume firing at their unseen enemy.
Over the channel, Riker barked, “Move up!”
Modan and Sethe charged to huddle with Riker and Sarai behind the scorched, twisted contraption, which appeared to have long ago fallen through the decks above to rest here.
“Well done, you two,” Sarai said. “Catch your breath, then we’ll—”
A deafening blast and a flash of light filled the corridor, and then Sarai was falling, and the others fell with her. They tumbled through fire and shadow, smoke and bent metal, to crash down in a smoldering heap onto another deck of the Husnock ship, surrounded by debris.
It took Sarai a few seconds to shake off the blast and the fall, then get her bearings. When the fog cleared from her vision, she realized that she, Riker, and the specialists were lying in a heap, and a pair of armed Nausicaans stood a few meters away, with disruptors at the ready.
“Now you die, Starfleet,” said the taller Nausicaan, over an open frequency. He aimed his weapon at Sarai—
A flurry of blaster shots peppered the corridor and raked the two Nausicaans, wounding the one who had been about to execute Sarai. Cursing and groaning, the pair retreated, firing wild shots over the prostrate away team into the darkness of the corridor beyond. Moments later the Nausicaans were gone, though Sarai heard their running steps echoing through the ship.
The team’s savior emerged from the shadows to stand above them. The Ferengi shook his head and frowned in disgust. “Never send Starfleet to do a man’s job.”
Riker squinted up at the Ferengi. “Who the hell are you?”
“Brunt. Bounty hunter.” He moved past them and continued down the same passage the Nausicaans had taken. “What are you waiting for, Starfleet? An invitation? Let’s go!”
There was no time to argue. The Ferengi was on the hunt. Sarai scrambled to her feet, helped Riker stand, and then they got Modan and Sethe up and moving. “Let’s go,” Sarai said to the group, “we can’t afford to lose him.”