“They’re popular because they have cloaks. Orion and Ferengi entrepreneurs are reported to have flotillas of ex–Klingon vessels, dating back to the old D-7s.”
“Cloaks are always going to be popular with smugglers, right enough,” Scotty agreed.
“They’re getting more popular with younger warp civilizations too. After the Dominion War and the Borg, people think being able to hide from the predators is a pretty good idea. I can’t honestly say they’re wrong.”
“They’re coming about,” Nog reported.
“Not for long,” Qat’qa added, sending the Challenger into a lurching spin as Nog launched a spread of torpedoes.
Intrepid shook violently and without warning. La Forge’s head snapped up from where he was examining the underside of the main engine control board. “What was that, Reg?”
Barclay looked around like a startled rabbit. “It wasn’t anything we did.”
“Challenger to Intrepid,” Hunt’s voice came over the communications relay, “brace yourselves!”
“What’s happening, Commander?” La Forge shouted, though in his heart he already knew. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce the painful truth.
“We’re under attack. Stand by.”
“Under attack?” Barclay echoed.
“That’s what he said.” La Forge headed for the nearest door. “Keep an eye on things here, Reg. I’ll be on the bridge.” He was the senior officer aboard Intrepid, which meant he was in command of her, and that meant his place was on the bridge.
Nog looked up from the unsettling news on his tactical board. “They’re targeting Intrepid.” He could feel an embryonic fear creeping up on him, telling him that he should be a proper Ferengi and trade, not fight, but he ignored it.
Scotty nodded. “Kat, get us between them and Intrepid.”
“Aye, sir, on our way.” She didn’t look up from her board.
Scotty turned to tactical. “Mister Nog, as soon as we’re in range, extend our shields around Intrepid.”
“Ready, sir.” Nog had anticipated the captain’s order and set it up already. The Intrepid had no shields, which meant only Challenger’s shields could protect her. A new blip appeared on the tactical sensors, and Nog checked its identity without even thinking. “Captain, the runabout Clyde has undocked from Intrepid.”
“What the hell is Carter playing at?”
The runabout Clyde shot off toward the Klingon ship, raising her shields and arming her weapons.
Lieutenant Carter, the broad-shouldered, freckle-faced New Zealander, had been checking over the connections between the Clyde and Intrepid’s environmental controls when the attack began, and he quickly realized that the runabout’s weapons were Intrepid’s only defense.
“Carter,” La Forge’s voice called. “Pull away! You don’t stand a chance!”
“If I can keep them off of Intrepid—”
The Clyde took a photon torpedo hit, and her port nacelle sparked with energy discharging out along the structure’s length instead of being carried safely along the waveguides to propel the vessel.
“Damn! Shields are down! EPS grid is—”
“Take evasive action!” La Forge, Scotty, and Hunt yelled at exactly the same time. They were all too late. A second torpedo punched the now unshielded runabout in the gut, and the ship disintegrated in a cloud of superheated debris.
Scotty glared at the dissipating wreckage, and felt the urge to do someone some damage. “Mister Nog. No more mister bloody nice guy.”
“Our shields are extended around Intrepid.”
On screen, the enemy ship heeled over, launched a couple of torpedoes from her aft tubes, and leapt to warp.
“Track her course,” Hunt ordered. “Long range scan in case they’re just trying to make us think they’re running, and have only made a short jump to the edge of the system.”
“Scanning,” Leah called from her station at the rear of the bridge. “They’re at warp, but it looks like a curved trajectory. They’re probably coming back.”
“Not if I can help it,” Scotty growled. “Commander La Forge,” he called out, giving the ship’s computer a couple of seconds to route the call through to Intrepid. “What’s your status over there?”
“A little shaken up, Captain, but we seem to be undamaged.” La Forge’s voice was calm and controlled.
Scotty hesitated. If he left the Intrepid alone, and lost track of the attacking ship, it could double back to hit them again. If he caught it, however, he could put a stop to this right now. “Good. Carry on, Mister La Forge. We’ll be back with you shortly.”
“Understood,” La Forge replied.
“Pursuit course,” Hunt told Qat’qa with a nod.
“Aye, sir,” she said with audible relish.
In Intrepid’s half-restored bridge, La Forge and Rasmussen watched the Challenger hurtle forward, warping after their attacker. La Forge knew that the Intrepid was capable of supporting the eleven people on board comfortably, and she could even move if she had to.
Rasmussen cleared his throat. “What do you think we should do now, Commander?”
La Forge grimaced at the idea that it was Rasmussen asking that. “Same thing we’ve been doing, only quicker. The sooner we’re able to move on our own, the better.”
“Uh-oh,” Ensign Balis said from the science station. He was Bolian, and flushed a deeper blue as he watched the sensors. “Sir, two ships are decloaking.”
“On screen!” The main viewer flickered, flashed, and spat static. Then, through the fog of randomized pixels, a long-necked ship with inverted goose wings painted in fiery red and gold swept past, followed by a larger, hunched crab of a vessel, which was the color of Martian dust.
“K’t’inga-class Klingon battle cruiser,” Balis said, looking at the sensor displays, “and—”
“And a Ferengi marauder,” La Forge said. “I see them. Hail the Challenger and tell them—”
Balis rattled the communications controls. “We’re being jammed.”
“Damn. Can we polarize the hull plating yet?”
“I think so, sir.” Balis started throwing switches. “But I don’t know how much good it’ll do.”
“Not a hell of a lot, against twenty-fourth century weapons,” Rasmussen commented. “But don’t let that put you off. The morale element should—”
“Thanks,” La Forge said curtly.
Rasmussen shrugged. “Space combat isn’t really my area of expertise, though the thought does occur that we’re a sitting duck with the shuttles still docked.”
La Forge winced, realizing that he should have thought of that himself. “Get the crews out. Blow the docking latches. We can catch up with the shuttles later, or Challenger can recover them.”
A shuttle drifted free from the Intrepid, and was almost immediately sliced open by a disruptor beam. It ripped apart, the on board atmosphere burning itself out in a momentary bloom of fire before it dissipated too far to sustain a flame.
As several more shuttles fell away from the Intrepid’s air-locks, propelled by emergency release charges, the K’t’inga-class ship looped around. It swung back toward the dispersing cluster of shuttles, green disruptor beams stabbing out and spearing the shuttles like moths against an entomologist’s wall. In a matter of seconds, there was nothing left of the shuttles but a few clouds of gas and sparkling debris.
The marauder slowed as it approached, looming over the tiny silver shape of the Intrepid.
Red whirlwinds deposited a Ferengi, two Klingons, and two Breen into the bridge of Intrepid, and the room began to feel overcrowded. La Forge started to reach for a phaser that he only wished he had. Nobody had anticipated the need to be armed on a derelict.
All of the new arrivals carried Klingon disruptors, which they kept covering the Starfleet crew. The Breen wore red refrigerated armor, the Klingons wore nonstandard leather and metal jerkins. The Ferengi, who looked more athletic and muscular than any Ferengi that La Forge had ever seen, glanc
ed to either side. Apparently satisfied that his men had their prisoners effectively covered, an assessment with which Geordi ruefully agreed, he lowered his weapon and approached La Forge.
“You were sensible not to resist.”
La Forge said, “If we had anything to resist with, we’d have given you all the resistance you could handle.”
“That’s good to hear. I’d hate to have wasted my time on cowards. Now, Commander La Forge . . .” The Ferengi laughed at Geordi’s immediate astonishment. “Yes, I know who you are. You have been speaking to Challenger on open channels, after all.”
“I guess you have the advantage.”
“Yes.” He smirked. “Now, a question. How many people are aboard?”
“If you couldn’t scan the ship before you beamed in, I don’t see a reason to tell you.”
“Of course we did. Consider it a test.”
“La Forge, Geordi, Rank: Commander—” The Ferengi silenced him with a raised finger, then drew his disruptor again, and leveled it at Rasmussen’s eye.
“Eleven,” Rasmussen yelped, his eyes bulging at the business end of the disruptor. “The four of us here, four in engineering, one looking after sickbay, two . . . exploring the ship.”
“Very good. Exactly what our sensors told us.” He nodded to the two Breen, who herded the Starfleet officers, and Rasmussen, to the rear of the bridge. The two Klingons took the science and helm stations. “You,” he said to Rasmussen. “Was LaForge lying about not having the where-withal to resist?”
Rasmussen shrugged. “He’s not lying. Intrepid’s weapons systems are still offline. No power to the phase cannons, and the servos that traverse and elevate them are still fused solid anyway.”
“Photon torpedoes?”
“The photonic torpedoes have decayed beyond usability. They could probably still be fired, but they’d be no better than cannonballs, as projectile weapons go.”
“No warheads?”
“Nothing that would actually go off. A good sneeze would have a larger yield than what’s currently in the armory’s launch bays.”
“Lucky me.” The Ferengi raised a communicator to his lips. “The Intrepid is secure. Lock on with tractor beams and prepare for docking procedures.”
“Acknowledged,” a voice crackled, but Geordi could barely make it out. A few moments later, La Forge’s stomach lurched as the tractor beam took effect on the ship, interfering with her gravity, and then there was a distant and muffled clang somewhere. The Ferengi and the two Breen prodded La Forge and Rasmussen past the briefing area. Geordi remembered to step down.
The tubolift opened, and another Ferengi emerged. He wore a civilian suit cut to look like a daimon’s uniform, and La Forge instantly recognized his thin-lipped demeanor of revulsion, and the embers that burned in his hollow eyes. “Bok . . .”
The hollow-eyed Ferengi stopped immediately. “You know me?” He turned moved closer, looking coldly over Geordi’s features. He paused as he met La Forge’s eyes, then raised his hand and put it, edge-on, between his own eyes and Geordi’s. He nodded, and smiled slowly. “Ah . . . I remember a man with a visual aid device across his eyes like this . . . On Picard’s Enterprise, yes?”
“I used to wear a VISOR, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’d forgotten the rest of your features . . .”
“A lot of people do. They just saw the VISOR.”
Bok’s expression veered between a smile and a sneer, as if he was unsure which approach would be most intimidating. “Is that why you got rid of it? Vanity, perhaps, or to make you feel better? Or perhaps it was simply a vulnerability, exploitable by your enemies?”
“The technology improved.” He couldn’t deny that Bok’s third suggestion had some merit. Both the Romulans and the Duras sisters had used his VISOR to attack the Enterprise and its crew. “The device was also painful to use.” Over time he had got used to the pain, and didn’t really register it any more, but as soon as Beverly Crusher had given him the new cybernetic eyes, the freedom from the pain had been a revelation.
“Painful? Well, every latinum lining has a cloud.” He drew a phaser from his belt and turned to Rasmussen. “Let me show you what I mean,” he said, and raised the phaser.
“No!” La Forge shouted. Rasmussen was a pain and a thief, but he didn’t deserve to be executed in cold blood. “Whatever you think Captain Picard did to you, this man had nothing to do with it.”
“You’d be surprised what this man has to do with,” Bok said with an evil grin. He stepped closer to Rasmussen. “And now I’m going to give him what he deserves.”
“No!”
Bok hesitated, obviously enjoying Geordi’s discomfort, then reversed his grip on the phaser, and handed it to Rasmussen. For half a second, Geordi almost thought he was surrendering, but then he realized the truth, as Rasmussen gave a little “ah” of triumph.
“You and La Forge know each other?” Rasmussen sounded as amazed as he looked.
“We have met,” Bok said.
“Wow. I mean, I knew that this is a much smaller universe than mine was back in the good old twenty-second century, but even so . . .” He spread his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry, Geordi, I really am, but, you know . . . The Starfleet life just isn’t really for me.” He looked at Bok. “I’ll be over . . . here.” With that, he stepped up onto the bridge, leaving a shocked and angry La Forge staring at his captors.
“What do you want this time, Bok? Do you think that you can get some advantage over Captain Picard by taking this ship?”
“A simplistic notion, which could have proved an amusing diversion, but, no. We have a much more profitable business venture in which to engage.” As he spoke, La Forge noticed a couple of Ferengi carrying crates onto the bridge. In fact, traffic onto the bridge had been pretty high while they had been talking.
“We? You can’t mean you and Rasmussen?”
“Mister Rasmussen is remarkably wise and approachable for a hew-mon. The merger we have made should provide profit beyond imagining.” Bok chuckled. “Though I can imagine a lot.”
La Forge couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “How long has it been since you really did anything for profit? You even spent time in jail for trying to seek unprofitable revenge on Captain Picard.”
“Revenge upon Picard would have profited my . . .” He trailed off, as if unable to think of the right word.
“Soul?”
Bok looked puzzled for a moment, as if trying to translate the word, or the concept, then snorted. “Such a concept is vaporware. My sense of well-being, perhaps.”
“And you just happened to stumble across us?”
Bok shook his head. “Actually we’ve been waiting for several days, shielded from you by the star’s photosphere.”
“Several days? What were you waiting for?”
“What do you think?”
“For us to get Intrepid up and running?” Bok nodded. “But your engineers—”
“Are not the specialists that Starfleet’s Corps of Engineers would send. They can get a ship running, or even improve it, but restore such an ancient vessel? No. Not in the time available.” Bok grinned nastily. “Allow me to congratulate you on the excellence of your work.”
Another Ferengi approached Bok. “Daimon, everything is aboard, except Sloe. The Starfleeters are being held in the mess for now.”
“Good. Escort Mister La Forge to join his comrades, and then tell Grak that he can undock.”
Rasmussen put a hand on the center seat that had been installed to replace the original, and tried to shove it back and forth, just to test that it was secure. Satisfied that it didn’t snap off from its mounting, he sat in it, shuffling around until he was comfortable. “Hm, I could get used to this.” He opened his mouth to give an instruction to the Breen at the helm, but then hesitated.
He had seen the news reports, and, in this century, viewed enough records and holoprograms about starship captains to last a lifetime, and he would have been
a liar if he had told his prison psychiatrist that he had never tried to imagine what sitting in the center seat of a starship was like.
“All right,” he said to the Breen, “so I’m a liar.”
Rasmussen had tried to imagine what it was like, and thought he had succeeded, but now he realized he was wrong. He had never actually imagined what it was really like. It was both wonderful and thrilling, and scary, and, in the end, just a slightly uncomfortable chair. He shifted in it some more, knowing he would have to get a cushion to put at the base of his spine if he was going to sit here for extended periods over the next few days.
Bok stepped next to Rasmussen, who couldn’t resist giving him a high-five. There were a couple of distant thuds. “Is that Grak?” Rasmussen asked.
“Yes, he has undocked. We are free to move.”
“Excellent!” Rasmussen grinned to himself. “Helm,” he said at last, “lay in a course for star system Delta Five in the Gamma Zeta Alpha cluster.” The suited Breen fiddled with some switches and buttons, then sat still. It took Rasmussen a moment to realize that the course was laid in, and the pilot waiting for the next order. “Aren’t you supposed to, you know, say something like ‘Course laid in,’ or ‘Okay, what next?’ Or something like that?” The Breen didn’t reply, and in fact didn’t even turn around. Rasmussen found himself wondering if there was actually a living being under that armor.
Rasmussen sighed, rolling his eyes. “All right, warp factor four.” The Breen’s hand was already moving. “Let’s go.”
“There is more to commanding a ship and crew than just sitting in the center of the room, Ras-mew-son.” Bok chuckled to himself as he moved toward the communications station. He reached across the newly fabricated box-like console units and opened a channel. “Grak, this is Bok.”
“Grak here. Go ahead, Daimon.”
“We’re ready to get under way. Engage your cloak, and follow us, just in case.”
“Understood. Cloaking now. Out.”
La Forge was relieved to see that everyone who was seated in the mess was mostly unharmed, though there were a couple of black eyes and one broken nose in the room. He had wasted no time telling Reg Barclay and the other eight Starfleet personnel about who had handed over their prize.
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