The Soldiers Of Fear

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  It felt odd not to have his usual bridge complement. Counselor Troi sat beside him, her face a mask, yet he could feel the tension radiate from her.

  No support from that quarter.

  Picard stood.

  “The damage on decks three and ten has stabilized,” Data said. “The shields on the rest of the ship are holding.”

  The lead Fury ship still stood between them and the wormhole, far too close for Riker’s safety.

  “Take that lead ship out of there,” Picard said.

  A barrage of photon torpedoes streaked from the Enterprise. They exploded against the shields of the Fury ship. If nothing else, it would get their attention.

  Maybe just long enough for Riker to get through.

  * * *

  Worf leaned into his console. His ship weaved through the fire from the Fury ships. He returned the shots with a vigor he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  Worf, son of Mogh, would die with honors. He would die defending his people from the Furies, and serving his ship with pride.

  He would give the Furies a fight they would never forget.

  The modified shuttlecraft had a great deal of firepower for its size. He used all of it, dodging and weaving, and shooting, all the time making the Furies think he was the most important enemy, diverting their attention from Commander Riker.

  The DoHQay made a pass at the Fury ship closest to the wormhole. It was circling above, and about to come in for another shot. Worf saw an opening underneath. He swung the shuttle upward, firing continuously as he went.

  The Fury ship’s shields were failing. Worf focused his fire on where his computer told him their screens were the weakest. The bright red phasers deflected off the shield, leaving a slightly pink glow. Worf was about to use one of his precious photon torpedoes when the Fury ship spun away out of control and exploded.

  The explosion was so close that it rocked the shuttle.

  Worf clutched the console as he fought for control. He still had fight in him. But the shuttle was swerving dangerously close to the other Fury ship. If Worf didn’t get his shuttle turned, he would hit the Fury ship. It would destroy both vessels, but it wouldn’t help Commander Riker. He might get caught in the explosion himself.

  Worf swerved and barely missed the ship’s hull. Sweat dripped off his ridged forehead. But they didn’t let him get away that easily.

  A phaser blast at close range destroyed his shields.

  The shuttle spun away, and Worf had to grip the console to keep from losing his seat.

  The screens went dead. The cabin filled with dark smoke, foul-smelling smoke, smoke that came not from an electrical fire, because he knew that smell. No, from something less familiar.

  The warp core.

  He struggled to regain his shields.

  He struggled to regain any vision he could of the fight.

  He struggled to bring his weapons on-line.

  The air was disappearing from the cabin. Sweat soaked his uniform.

  Then he brought the computer on-line.

  “Engine failure in ten seconds.” The familiar voice started her countdown.

  Worf pounded on the console, but nothing else responded.

  “Seven …”

  He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt heavy.

  “Six …”

  He ignored it, pushing emergency relays, trying to regain any control at all.

  “Five …”

  The voice sounded so calm. Not even a Klingon would sound that calm in this situation.

  “Four …”

  The smoke was now so thick that he couldn’t even see his hands.

  “Three …”

  One glimpse of the battle. Just one. To know if Riker made it.

  “Two …”

  But he would never know. All that he would know was that he had done his best. Mentally he saluted the commander and wished him well.

  “One …”

  Riker had been right. It was a good day to die.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE SHUTTLE WAS ON COURSE. The shuttle was on course.

  Riker stared at the screen and the console, keeping the wormhole firmly in his vision, ignoring the chaos as best he could.

  Eight seconds.

  In eight seconds he would be there.

  Then Worf’s shuttle streaked across space, whipping and spinning like a child’s toy thrown by an angry child. Riker glanced at it, feeling suddenly helpless.

  Seven seconds.

  If he helped Worf, he would jeopardize the entire Federation and his mission.

  Six seconds.

  Both Klingon ships were firing on the Fury ship nearest the wormhole. The firefight was incredible, the laser firepower blinding. Redbay had fired a dozen or more shots and then veered away to stay out of the path of the two Birds-of-Prey.

  Five seconds.

  The Enterprise had taken on the main Fury ship in a one-on-one battle. The Idaho and the Madison were in a three-against-two fight.

  Four seconds.

  There was no help for Worf. No one could save him. He would die in battle.

  “Sorry, old friend,” Riker said, wishing Worf could hear him.

  But to save Worf would be the worst thing Riker could do. Worf would want to die in battle. It was the best way for a Klingon to die. To make Worf’s death meaningful, the mission had to succeed, and it was up to him to make sure it did.

  Three seconds. The wormhole suddenly looked huge. The space around it was clear. The other ships had done their jobs.

  Two seconds.

  Riker glanced at his weapons. The torpedoes were ready. So was he. Worf wouldn’t die in vain.

  Then, without warning, another Fury ship came out of the mouth of the wormhole directly in front of him.

  The ship was huge, and this close, it looked like a demon itself.

  He suddenly needed every last ounce of his piloting skill.

  He yanked the shuttle hard to port, hoping to flash past the Fury ship before it even had time to react. He was going to be so close that his shuttle would bounce off the Furies’ outer screens, he hoped right into the wormhole.

  But they saw him.

  The ship turned as he did, its larger bulk making the turn shorter. He would make it into the wormhole. They had actually made it easier….

  Then a bright flare caught his eye. Point-blank phaser shot.

  He didn’t even have time to react.

  No steering away, no doubling the power of his shields, no time to scream and throw his arms over his head.

  One minute he was moving forward, the next his shuttle had turned into a metal fireball, tumbling through space.

  “Shields failing,” the computer said.

  The heat was incredible. The console and chair were both suddenly too hot to touch.

  “Environmental controls inoperative,” the computer said.

  Riker slipped off his tunic jacket, wrapped it around his hand, and hit the stabilizing controls. Somehow he got the shuttle upright, and the screens back on.

  Sweat poured from his skin. He had to turn around. He had to get back to that wormhole.

  But the Fury ship didn’t let up. It followed him, firing as it came.

  “Warning. Internal temperature at unsustainable levels,” the computer said. “Warning.”

  “Great,” Riker muttered. “Just great.”

  The heat was even more terrifying considering the lack of smoke. That meant some sort of severe systems meltdown was imminent.

  But it wouldn’t take long through that wormhole, if he could just turn around.

  “Warning. Systems overload in thirty seconds,” the computer said.

  He was too far away. He wouldn’t make it to the wormhole mouth within a minute, let alone thirty seconds.

  Angry, he fired what was left of his phasers at the ship, but it was like firing a water pistol at a three-alarm fire.

  He glanced for Worf’s shuttle. Maybe, if he couldn’t save himself, he coul
d save Worf—but he was too far away.

  The Furies hit the shuttle again. The lights flickered on, off, then on again.

  “Warning. Shields have failed. Systems overload in fifteen seconds.”

  He lost his last shields. One more blast and he would be dead.

  The console was hot to his wrapped hand. He pounded it with his fist.

  “Systems overload in ten seconds.”

  Ten seconds and no chance of success.

  Ten seconds to contemplate the fact that he, William T. Riker, had failed.

  * * *

  The scene on his viewscreens was a nightmare. Redbay had flown thousands of mock space battles while testing ships, but never had he thought he would be a firsthand witness and player in one of the most important battles, with the survival of the Federation and the Klingon Empire at stake.

  And the Federation and Klingons were losing.

  Worf’s shuttle had taken some serious hits and was tumbling out of control. Riker had almost made it when another Fury ship had appeared in front of him, blasting him away from the wormhole like a paper toy in a strong wind.

  But luckily, that Fury ship hadn’t seen Redbay. Instead it followed Riker, pounding him with shot after shot.

  Now Redbay was the only one left.

  And the wormhole was there in front of him like a gaping black mouth.

  All he had to do was beat any of those Fury ships to it. But Riker’s attempt had clued them in. They knew the shuttles weren’t escaping, but trying for the worm-hole. The Fury ships, fighting with the starships, were actually backing closer to the wormhole.

  To guard it.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” he said aloud as Riker’s shuttle took another full blast. “I’ll give them something more to think about in just a second.”

  His hands flew over the controls of the shuttle, keying in a familiar sequence. He’d run a hundred ships through it in test, but never under actual battle circumstances. It was called, among the test pilots, the old “Down and Out” pattern. He had no idea how it got its name, some pilot long before he came along.

  The Down and Out consisted of taking a ship at a wide, sweeping, almost lazy arch, then suddenly veering at the target. The theory was that a ship following would be thrown off guard by the move and the ship making the move would gain a slight advantage in distance.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  He finished the entering the sequence into the computer and engaged.

  Around him the battle seemed to flash past as he took the shuttle almost away from the wormhole in a wide arch.

  “Three more seconds,” he said to himself.

  The wormhole was a gaping mouth off his port side.

  He waited. Waited. Then said “Now!” as he punched the board hard. The shuttle veered sharply to port, increasing speed to its maximum subwarp. The wormhole grew directly in his front screen, now only a few very long seconds away.

  “Right on the money.” He could feel himself starting to celebrate another successful move, just as he used to do back at the testing area.

  Then he was reminded that this was no longer a test as a blast from below hit the shuttle.

  “What?”

  It took all his skills and strength just to stay in the pilot’s seat. The shuttle was knocked away, and its tumbling momentum took it past the mouth of the wormhole, missing by a large enough distance to make no difference.

  A miss was a miss.

  The shuttle kept tumbling, and he let it as he searched for a bearing on what had hit him. Even with the shuttle spinning, it didn’t take him long to find the problem. One of the Fury ships had veered away from its fight with the Klingons to take him out of his run at the hole. But now the Klingon Bird-of-Prey was stalking it, engaging it again. And from the looks of it, the Klingon ship was winning this time.

  For the moment he was safe. He quickly stabilized the tumble of the shuttle and turned it around, going in a wide arch over the battle. First things first. He needed to get back to the correct side of the wormhole.

  The mouth side.

  “Well, that sure didn’t work,” he said out loud again. “And I got to stop talking to myself so much. Just as soon as this mission is over.”

  Sweat dripped from his face as he did a quick check of the systems. His screens were at fifty percent, but otherwise the ship was fine. From the looks of it, he was in a lot better shape than Worf. His shuttle seemed to be completely dead in space.

  Redbay took the shuttle at full speed back into a position far above and to one side of the wormhole. It seemed to take forever, but in real time it was less than thirty seconds before he was in place.

  From here the battle looked like a bunch of toys fighting. But he knew that in those toys real beings were dying, giving their lives for what they believed.

  “Looks like I’m still the only shot. Got to make this one work.”

  He studied the situation carefully. One of the Fury ships had backed almost to the mouth of the wormhole, but the other Klingon ship was giving it a pounding. The oval shape of the hole looked like a small button against the starfields of space.

  A very small target.

  Very small.

  Suddenly he knew how to get in there. “You better be as good as you’ve claimed,” he said aloud. “Or you’re going to be very, very dead.”

  He punched in a few quick commands, then glanced at the screen. Riker’s shuttle was still tumbling out of control. Will had wanted to see the Redbay Maneuver firsthand. “Well, old friend, you finally get your chance,” Redbay said, wishing Will were in the shuttle with him. He didn’t want to think about his friend on a damaged shuttle, about to die for nothing.

  Redbay would make certain they all succeeded.

  He never really was starship material. He had always been a pilot. Only now the tests were done. This was real.

  Very real.

  The Redbay Maneuver was a test-pilot stunt he’d run many a ship through. In essence it was a ninety-degree turn in space. He used impulse drive to move the ship in one direction. Then, with an almost instantaneous firing and shutting down of the warp drive, he would turn the ship ninety degrees while in the forming and collapsing warp bubble. He’d been the first to try it and make it work; thus he got the honor of the name.

  He had three problems. The first was simple. He had never run a shuttlecraft through this particular maneuver.

  The second was related to the first: The shuttle’s stabilizers would be strained beyond the recommended endurance. If they failed he would be nothing more than a large splash of red on the darkness of space. But the stabilizers would hold. They’d have to. He had no other choice if he wanted to live.

  And the third was a big problem in and of itself. If he missed the wormhole, he’d be going so fast he’d never make it back into position before the next Fury ship arrived. He’d never have a second chance.

  But going fast was a good thing in this situation, because none of the Fury ships would have time to take a shot at him.

  So he just wouldn’t miss.

  It was that simple.

  He initiated the procedure, setting the speed at full impulse. Then he aimed the shuttle at a ninety-degree angle across the mouth of the wormhole. It actually would appear that he was heading for the battle between the Madison, the Idaho, and the three Fury ships. They might even think he was trying to get back to the Enterprise.

  With only a quick glance at Riker’s tumbling ship—it still hadn’t righted itself—he focused all his attention on making the turn at exactly the right instant.

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  “One.”

  “Now!” he shouted to the empty shuttle cabin, and triggered the Redbay Maneuver.

  The shuttle stabilizers screamed in protest.

  But he held on, praying his theories were right.

  And all the years of practice would pay off.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  THE ENTERPRISE ROC
KED. Picard stood on the bridge, his hands clasped behind his back, presenting, he hoped, a calm in the center of the storm.

  Around him, the red-alert lights were flashing. The regular lighting was on three-quarter power, because Mr. La Forge had rerouted the environmental controls to the shields.

  So far they were holding.

  But Picard didn’t know how long they would hold.

  The battle raged around the wormhole. He had managed to get the Enterprise between the lead Fury ship and the wormhole, providing an opening for the shuttlecrafts.

  “Lieutenant Worf’s shuttle has been hit,” Data said. “It appears to have lost helm control. Life-support is failing.”

  “Lock on to him, Mr. Data.”

  “Sir, we cannot beam him out now. We would have to lower our shields.”

  “I know that, Mr. Data.” Picard stared at the screen. The tiny shuttlecraft looked like a bug against the giant Fury ships. “We’ll beam him when we can.”

  “If we wait too long, sir, he—”

  “I am aware of the risks, Mr. Data.”

  Data nodded and swiveled back, facing his console. Troi clasped her hands together. She hadn’t gotten out of her chair since the fight started. Picard wasn’t sure if she could stand.

  She was aware of the risks as well. Most likely neither Worf nor Will Riker would return.

  Picard wouldn’t lose two good men in a failed mission if he had anything to say about it.

  The Enterprise rocked again.

  “Shields holding,” Eckley said.

  “Return fire,” Picard said.

  But as he stared at the screen, he didn’t watch his own battle. He watched the shuttlecrafts.

  Redbay broke off his run, veering to starboard to give Riker a clear path to the wormhole.

  “Another Fury ship is emerging from the wormhole,” Data said.

  “Warn Commander Riker!” Picard shouted, but it was too late. In horror Picard watched as Riker moved his shuttle in a quick series of moves to a course that would take it speeding past the new Fury ship and into the wormhole.

  Only the Fury ship had another plan.

  With a phaser burst it sent Riker’s shuttle tumbling, then moved after it like a bully chasing a small victim.

  “Move to intercept that new ship,” Picard ordered.