by Ilsa J. Bick
He tripped over something—a rock lip, a stone perhaps—staggered. Pitched forward into the darkness. He managed to get his hands out in front and caught himself, but the tunnel floor was uneven and dropped a half-meter. Then the heels of his hands banged into the hard rock, and he heard something snap in his right wrist.
Chen-Mai screamed and then he screamed again. His scream bounced off the low walls and reverberated in the darkness. Rolling onto his left side, Chen-Mai cradled his shattered right wrist against his chest. He couldn’t see his wrist, wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he knew that it was broken.
Now, something else: something wet, warm on his fingertips, the fingertips of his left hand. And an odd smell, like wet metal, damp rust. Cautiously, he wormed the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist. Grazed against something sharp, and then moist fabric. Odd. Maybe he’d torn his suit and ...
Bone. Chen-Mai’s eyes bulged in the darkness. The jagged ends of bone that had torn through his skin.
Chen-Mai threw his head back and howled.
At just about the same time that Talma spotted both the shuttle and shuttlepod—and before she had a chance to even wonder about why a Starfleet shuttlecraft was in the vicinity much in the less in the company of Vaavek’s shuttlepod—she also saw the Cardassians, barreling her way.
“Hunnh!” Her breath rushed out of her lungs in surprise. For a brief instant, she was absolutely frozen in place, her mind slamming on the brakes. She watched the Cardassian scouts get larger and larger, closer and closer ...
She snapped out of her shock and tried to get her mind working. The Cardassians were here, now, early. But how?
Her forehead crinkled. Could it be the signal, the one Vaavek had sent, that alerted them? But no—as quickly as she had that thought, she dismissed it—the signal had come first, then the Cardassians appeared, and then ...
Her eyes went round. Then Vaavek had lifted off the surface and in the company of the shuttlecraft. Too far away for her to figure out where the shuttlecraft had come from, which ship, though she had a fair idea.
Garrett. The Enterprise. By God! Her fist slammed onto the console. But how had Garrett figured it out? When?
And no matter that: The order was wrong. She should’ve spotted it right away, but she’d let her greed get the better of her. The order was wrong. Vaavek should have lifted off first then activated the signal. He—or Garrett—was counting on her moving out from behind the moon.
A decoy. Talma’s brown eyes slitted. Yes, that was it. Vaavek had sent the signal. He knew, somehow, that the Cardassians were there. Using that cold Vulcan calculus she’d come to appreciate, Vaavek would gamble that the scouts would either ignore the tinier shuttlepod completely, or lose it in the confusion of weapons’ fire. How he knew didn’t matter at the moment. Nothing mattered anymore except that Talma was a sitting duck. The Cardassians were faster, more maneuverable than the Vulcan warpshuttle.
Now her mind raced over her options. They were diminishingly few. It was either run, or run.
All right. Bringing the ship’s navigational computer back on-line, she barked out a command as her hands flew over the T’Pol’s weapons’ systems. All right, two could play at this game. They wanted a decoy? Talma’s lips split in a savagely triumphant smile. She’d give them a decoy.
She picked out the shuttlepod’s port nacelle, targeting manually as the computer chittered to itself in Vulcan, spitting out coordinates for taking the ship toward the neutron star. Talma listened with half an ear; her Vulcan was impeccable and she was confident the computer knew what it was doing.
She didn’t bring the weapons on-line. Not just yet. Lock on, and the shuttlepod might see, veer off. Or that shuttlecraft might warn Vaavek. Talma tracked the blip that was the Vulcan shuttlepod. One shot, she figured, then the Cardassians would be on her—unless she gave them something infinitely more interesting to look at.
“Come on,” she urged under her breath, watching as the Cardassians sped toward them. The shuttlepod was nearly in range. “Come on.”
Five, four ... the shuttlepod drew closer, closer and she saw that its shields weren’t up and that was very, very good ... three, two.
“Now!” Talma shouted. “Computer, nu-at, weedawa! Nave-zehlek, klamacha thes! Dooohchat!
And because Talma’s Vulcan was impeccable, the T’Pol’s shields snapped into place, her phasers locked on target, and the computer fired phasers. Full power.
And, at that exact moment, the shuttlepod accelerated straight for her on a collision course.
Chicken. Halak barreled toward the T’Pol. He’d just play chicken and see which of them blinked first.
“Because I don’t trust you, Burke,” he said, his smile vicious and just this side of truly malevolent. “Because I think you’re going to try to blow me out of the quadrant before the Cardassians do. Because that’s what I would do.”
An alarm screamed, and Halak’s eyes jerked left. Cardassian scouts and, damn, they were fast!
“Captain, here they come, here they come!” Halak shouted. At the same instant, he saw the phaser lock from the T’Pol. Read that her shields had snapped into place.
“Halak!” It was Garrett. “She’s got a lock! Get your shields up, get them up!”
“Shields! Taking evasive maneuvers!” Halak slammed his palm down upon his shield control as he brought the ship around in a tight, spiraling turn, port and aft. If there had been air, he imagined that he would hear it screaming past his window, feel the force of his acceleration flattening him into his seat, squeezing his chest. But his gravity was holding and so he felt nothing: saw only the dizzying stirring of the stars and ionized gases outside his window, the flickering beams of phasers licking past the ship.
Missed. But she’d fired again. Halak slid the shuttlepod Z-plus 50. Climbing, climbing ... and where was she, where was the T’Pol? Halak’s eyes scrambled over his sensor displays. She ought to becoming around, for another pass, leaping after him like a hound chasing a rabbit.
But no. Halak gawked. Scrubbed at his eyes to be sure. No, the T’Pol was headed in the opposite direction, toward the neutron star. Not after him, or the shuttlecraft. Probably thinking she could hide in the magnetic well, wait things out.
Then he saw something that made him bang his fists down upon his console in frustration. One Cardassian on T’Pol’s tail, but the other Cardassian was letting her go, at least for the moment.
Because you were so helpful, Burke, pointing us out. Halak punched in a channel. “Captain! The brown star! Make a run for it! Go, go, go!”
Without waiting to see what Garrett did, Halak jerked the shuttlepod around and bore down on the remaining Cardassian. Same game—his hand hovered over his phaser controls—we play the same damn game and let’s see if this Cardassian even knows what a chicken is.
He managed to evade the first disrupter blast but not the second. For a split instant, the shuttlepod’s artificial gravity wavered, and Halak pitched forward, banging the point of his chin against the edge of his pilot’s console. Pain exploded along his jaw and shivered into his teeth. Blood filled his mouth, trickled down his throat, and he gagged. There was a sensation of spinning; the tiny craft whirling like a top ...
I’m dead, thought Halak. The centrifugal force had him pinned in his chair, and he couldn’t move, but he didn’t think there was anything he could do anyway. I’m dead.
Then the gravity clicked back and Halak lurched forward, coughed out a spray of blood. Alarms screamed. With a vicious swipe, he silenced them. He knew how bad things were.
“Halak!” Garrett’s voice sizzled through static. Halak heard the thin high whine of a phaser discharge, then looked out his window and saw the space bloom around the Cardassian scout, watched as one of the Cardassian’s forward shields flared orange from a phaser hit. Instead of making a run for the brown star, Garrett had circled around and was trying to draw the Cardassians away from his ship. “Halak, answer me, damn it!”
“Here, Captain.” Halak coughed again, sponged blood from his jaw. The skin over his chin was split wide open and he was bleeding so much he could feel it pooling at his neck.
He toggled up his displays. “Shields fifty percent. And there’s something wrong with my engines. They’ve kicked out. I don’t understand, the disrupter blast wasn’t that bad, it wasn’t ...”
Burke. Halak felt himself go cold. The way she hadn’t come after him. Somehow she’d rigged the engines so a phaser blast or a disrupter hit would take them off-line, would finish him. That’s why she’d only fired once.
But he had no time. He ground his teeth together. The Cardassians out there, angling around for another run, they’d finish him off, and he was out of time, there was no time, no time!
“Captain!” Halak grappled to bring the ship around. The shuttlepod was sluggish, the controls mushy, and Halak had the insane thought that he’d probably be better off getting out and pushing for all the maneuverability he had. “Captain, can you hear me? My navigational control’s shot! I’ve got nothing here! Do you copy? Captain? Captain?”
“Dead in space,” said Glemoor, his eyes taking in the scene from the bridge’s main viewscreen. He looked back at Bat-Levi. “Whoever’s on board that shuttlepod still has shields, but he won’t last another two, three passes.”
“Life signs? One of us?”
“We’re too far away. Too much interference.”
“So, nothing to lock onto, and no way to beam them out even if we could, what with that mess out there.” Bat-Levi’s jaw set. “Well, at least, we have an idea where the captain is. How’s the shuttlecraft?”
“I read minor damage to the aft hull. Shields are holding. The shock waves from those disrupter blasts are going to be tricky for the captain in terms of maneuverability, but as long as her axial stabilizers are functional she ought to be able to dodge them. She appears to be on course directly for us. She’s fine, for the moment.”
“Dammit, how fine can you be with a Cardassian disruptor pointed down your throat?” said Castillo.
“Anything, Mr. Bulast?” asked Bat-Levi, judging Castillo’s question to be rhetorical.
“Nothing, Commander. She’s not hailing, so she must believe we’ve left the area. Castillo’s right. If the Cardassian can’t see us, then she can’t either. Even if she knew we were here, I can’t imagine that she’d alert the Cardassian to our presence.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something!” Castillo blurted. His face was getting pink. “That’s the captain out there! Look, she’s trying to make a run for the star. Well, we’re here. What, we’re just going to wait and congratulate her if she makes it? We can’t just stand around and do nothing!”
Kodell had come to the bridge as soon as Glemoor had sighted the Cardassian bearing down on the fourth planet. (Bat-Levi thought it curious for him to be on the bridge at all; Kodell could just as easily handle his duties down below. But she found his presence reassuring, and then wondered if that’s what he’d had in mind.) Now he turned from his station and favored the ensign with a cool glance. “I’m sure the commander doesn’t require you to remind her that something needs to be done, Ensign.”
Bat-Levi held up a hand—her bad one, as it happened, but she wasn’t feeling self-conscious at the moment. “No, it’s all right,” she murmured, her eyes scanning the main viewer and watching how the space around the shuttlecraft and Vulcan shuttlepod erupted in fiery blossoms of ignited gas and plasma. “I’m just trying to figure out how many orders I want to disobey in one day.”
There was movement behind her left shoulder, and then she heard Kodell’s voice, low, pitched for her ears only: “But you do need to do something.”
That made her mad, but she kept her voice down. “Thanks for the reminder. You know damn well I can’t fire on the Cardassian scout, without raising all kinds of hell. We’re in disputed space and we’re here because of a breach in Starfleet security, remember?”
“The captain’s turning!” Castillo sang. “Heading back toward the shuttlepod!”
“What?” Bat-Levi didn’t want to say it, but she thought that this bordered on suicidal.
“May I remind you,” Kodell continued, as if nothing had happened, “that if that Cardassian does see us and lives to tell about it, the end result will be the same? All they have to do is report back to their Central Command, and we’ll still have an incident on our hands. There are, however, creative ways to bend the rules, without you having to fire one direct shot.”
Kodell nodded toward the viewscreen, and Bat-Levi turned in time to see another piece of space around the shuttlecraft flare. “That’s a lot of plasma out there,” said Kodell. “A lot of very volatile plasma.”
Her anger evaporated. Bat-Levi looked from Kodell to the viewscreen and then to Kodell again.
“Oh,” she said, showing her teeth in a savage grin, “you are good.”
“He’ll blow,” Stern warned. “No way Halak’s going to last they keep firing at him like that.”
“He’s not the only one. Can you raise him?” Garrett spun the shuttle port and down thirty, but not soon enough. The shuttle lurched and bucked, and she heard Stern curse.
“Crap,” Stern rapped. Then: “No. We’re too far away. Too much damned interference.”
“Any closer, and we might as well charge admission,” said Garrett, trying to force the shuttle into a turn by dint of her will. She felt the vessel turn, turn, turn ... then slam into a shock wave. Garrett gasped, felt her stomach bottom out as gravity failed for an instant then came back.
Those damn disrupters, they’re touching off plasma explosions left and right, shock waves from all sides ...
Clearly, they were trying to stop her from making a run for the brown star. Succeeding, too. She understood the Cardassians’ strategy. If they couldn’t get her with a direct shot, they could ignite the space around her. Like having a whole bunch of phasers. No, better than that: mines. Garrett pushed a shock of hair out of her eyes and tried to think. Either her shields would fail, or the ship would simply buckle and break apart from the shock waves, all that radiation and charged particles slamming into their hull. She couldn’t fault the Cardassian on his tactics either. She’d have done the same thing herself if she had enough firepower.
She watched Halak’s shuttlepod flounder through space. Somehow, miraculously, the commander had managed to eke out some power from a maneuvering thruster and he’d avoided the Cardassian so far. Not for long, though: She watched the Cardassian scout peel off and bear down on Halak’s vessel. As the Cardassian ramped up his speed, she saw a brief pink flare erupt then disappear as the Cardassian’s vented plasma ignited a swirl of ionized gas.
Enough firepower. Garrett’s breath caught. My God, of course!
“Hang on!” Garrett slammed the shuttle into a reverse turn, pivoting the vessel on its long axis and bringing it around. She punched the shuttle to max acceleration, and the vessel leapt toward the Vulcan shuttlepod.
“What are you doing?” Stern shouted. Grabbing onto her console, she braced herself. “Are you trying to end this sooner rather than later?”
Garrett didn’t answer. She punched up Halak’s comchannel. “Commander!”
A wash of static, then: “Here.”
“Do you still have phasers?”
“Affirmative.”
“What about shields?”
“Twenty percent, max. But ...”
“That will have to do. Listen. I want to try something. Two words: Kolvoord Starburst.”
An instant’s silence. “Captain, I don’t have the maneuverability. There’s no way I’ll be able to cross your flight path and ignite my plasma trail without ramming into ...”
“You and I won’t have to get that close. Listen. It’s the same principle, but instead of us crossing each other’s flight paths, I want us to pull closer to the Cardassian and concentrate ...” It took her five seconds to explain, and two for him to agree.
“My God.” S
tern was shaking her head as Garrett dropped the ship at Z-minus-70 and brought the shuttle around. “You’re both certifiable. You are going to get us barbecued.”
“Not if I can barbecue them first.” Rushing toward the Cardassian scout, Garrett targeted the space behind the vessel. She brought her phasers on line, full power. “Shields at maximum. Commander, on my mark, in three, two, one, fire!”
Garrett’s phaser beams sizzled across space. The energy from Halak’s phaser joined hers. There was a split second where absolutely nothing happened—when Garrett watched the Cardassian plowing through plasma whorls and ionized gas toward Halak’s shuttlepod. Then there was a blinding flash, so bright and quick that the automatic polarizing filters didn’t have a chance to snap into place and Garrett winced, threw her hand up to shield her eyes. Then she watched as the space ignited behind the Cardassian, streaming up the Cardassian’s vented plasma tail the way fire licks along a stream of kerosene. The space behind and around the Cardassian exploded in a fireball, and the scout disappeared in an orange-yellow maelstrom of ionized gas and ignited plasma.
“Shock waves!” Stern cried.
A wall of ionizing radiation crashed against the shuttle like water barreling through a broken dam. Something shorted just behind Garrett’s head; she smelled ozone and scorched metal.
“Jase!” she shouted, battling for control of the ship. She watched, helplessly, as her port maneuvering thruster went out, and her starboard thruster flickered.
But her son was already out of his seat. “I got it!” he cried, grabbing for an extinguisher. Wrenching it free of the bulkhead, he thumbed the extinguisher on and opened up with a short burst once, twice. He staggered back as the shuttle rolled then canted on its short axis.
“I’m losing her, I’m losing her!” Garrett shouted. She tried slowing the ship’s spin, but she had no thruster control.
The hull began to vibrate, the consoles to rattle. “Shields and phasers off-line!” Stern reported, shouting above the din. “Rachel, your inertial dampers are failing.”