Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers

by James Swallow

  “What angers you about the Lhemor is not that the ship was obliterated, that Bajorans and Oralians, even loyal Cardassian soldiers, died in honorable service to the needs of their nation…” Ico shook her head gently. “No, the root of your fury is that the military was kept in the dark. You were kept in the dark.”

  Dukat’s jaw set hard, his skin stiffening with annoyance. If there had been any doubt still remaining in his mind that Ico was in the Obsidian Order’s service, it fled now in the face of her cool insight.

  The edges of a cruel smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “But the time for that is over. Perhaps we can use your passion to a better end.” She studied him, looking him up and down. “What do you have to offer your Union, Dukat? Are you just an ordinary officer with pretensions above his station…or could you rise above your rank to become something more?”

  “I will do what Cardassia requires of me.” He bit out the words. “Even if that means I must serve alongside you.”

  Ico looked at Kell. “The dal has brought me some fresh perspective, Jagul. It’s time to move things along. We must work harder to isolate the Oralians and reinforce Cardassia’s influence over this planet.”

  “And how do you propose we accomplish that?” Kell demanded.

  “I can tell you how,” Dukat replied. “I understand these aliens. I’ve seen how they think, how they feel, and what they want.” Unbidden, memories surfaced in his thoughts. On the battlements of the Naghai Keep on the eve of the great feast. Dukat and the lawman, Darrah, talking as two men, nothing more; then again, in the corridors of the castle, as hate filled him and the need to take Hadlo’s life burned in his skin. The Bajoran’s words came back to in him a flash of insight. We’re a passionate people. We get so angry about things we lose focus on everything else. “The Bajorans hold grudges forever,” he told them.

  “They nurture them like their children. All we need to do to blindside these people is to bring them to rage. You only made them afraid. We need to make them furious.”

  “I refer you to my earlier statement.” Kell was sour.

  Dukat leaned forward and picked up a padd from the jagul’s desk. On it was a report of two Bajoran warships that had recently departed the star system. The raw anger he had felt when he entered the room waned, replaced by a colder, more controlled resentment. They were forming a pact here, he realized. Without open words or accords, Dukat, Ico, and Kell were opening the way to the fall of an entire civilization. For the good of Cardassia. For Athra and my family.

  “I know exactly how to do it,” he told them.

  Lonnic entered the Clarion’s triangular bridge at the apex, the hatch doors retracting into the deck at her approach. On the upper tier of the command deck men and women in gray uniforms sat working consoles, and on the lower level in the engineering pits she saw enlisted crew busy at banks of power controls. Colonel Li’s station was offset to the starboard side, ringed with elliptical panels that relayed all the data the ship’s commander required from the heavy assault ship’s systems.

  The Clarion was unlike the scouts of the Jas clan’s fleet or the civilian liners Lonnic was familiar with. The military ship was all steel walls and sparse construction; the compartment they had provided her with was barely the width of her closet back home on Bajor, with a netting hammock-bed instead of the sleeping pallet she was used to.

  Li beckoned her across the bridge, speaking to one of the other crew members. “Does it match the profile we have in our database?”

  The officer nodded. “Confirmed, Colonel. It’s not a target we’ve designated before, but the energy silhouette and warp trail decay curve are right on the line.”

  “Good. Start a sensor file on this one, designate it as required, and then have the navigator plot me a speed course for intercept.”

  “Acknowledged.” The officer stepped away, and Li turned his attention to the adjutant.

  “Ms. Lonnic. I wanted to let you know. The crew of one of your scoutships, the Kylen, has reported in. They’ve confirmed a report we received of a possible Tzenkethi contact a few light-years from our current position. Those sensors of theirs are quite impressive.”

  She nodded. “We’re going to approach it, then?”

  “Just as soon as I have my ship in order. I want to get this done quickly and cleanly, then get home to my wife and son.” His words were clipped. Lonnic could see he didn’t want to tarry out here in the depths of the sector any longer than he needed to. Like the rest of the Clarion crew, he wanted decisive action rather than a long, drawn-out operation.

  Something concerned her. “Colonel, you said you received a report? From one of the other vessels?”

  He shook his head. “A subspace signal from Bajor, relayed from the crew of a freighter.”

  “Who sent the signal?”

  He glanced at a console. “It was a ministerial mandate, from the office of Kubus Oak. The freighter is one of his.”

  “Kubus?” Lonnic felt herself tense. “With all due respect, Colonel, can you be sure the data is, ah—”

  “Trustworthy?” Li broke in. “That’s why I had the Kylen make a close approach to the location. They confirmed it. A single Tzenkethi marauder at anchor in the Ajir system.”

  Lonnic’s mistrust was acid in her throat. “All the same, perhaps we should proceed with caution.”

  “My intentions exactly,” he snapped back, prickling at her manner. “And when we’re done with caution, if I detect one atom of explosives on board that ship, we’ll space them.” The colonel shot her another look. “There were friends of mine aboard a Guard cutter tethered to Cemba Station, Ms. Lonnic. Not a one of them got out alive. I intend to offer the Tzenkethi the very same.”

  She fell silent. Did Kubus know that Li has a personal stake in this reprisal? The answer was obvious. Of course he does. Doubtless Li Tarka was selected over Jaro Essa to lead the mission for just that reason.

  The bridge officer called out to his commander. “Ajir course plotted and laid in, Colonel. Action stations at standby.”

  Li settled back into his chair. “Sound alert condition and make for maximum warp cruise. We have some unfinished business to conclude.”

  Lonnic glanced up at the tripartite viewscreen just as the Clarion leapt beyond light speed, streaking the darkness with bands of white.

  Gar glanced out of the flyer’s sloped window, watching the lowlands flash past in a blur of greenery. In the distance he could see the hazy peaks of the Kendran Range; below the mountains were the floodplains of the River Yolja, but it was impossible to see them through a thick bank of ashen-colored clouds sweeping eastward toward them. In the distance the priest could make out tiny bright glitters where lightning was flashing to the ground. The storm would be upon the lowlands by nightfall, and the summer tempests were always harsh, despite the work of the weather modification satellites.

  The sight of the storm deepened Gar’s sense of discomfort, and he turned back to face Pasir in the pilot’s chair. “How much farther?”

  “Not far now,” the Cardassian said briskly.

  Gar sighed. “Pasir, please, you cannot simply expect me to remain silent while we fly about the planet. You speak of secrets, of something you call the Obsidian Order, and then take this ship without filing a flight plan…”

  “I did file a flight plan,” Pasir corrected. “Just not the one we’re actually using.” The flyer hit a thermal, and the alien deftly navigated through it.

  “I wasn’t aware you were such an accomplished pilot.”

  Pasir shrugged. “I’d imagine there’s much about me you’re unaware of.” He said the words with cold dismissal.

  Gar’s resolve hardened. “I think we should turn around,” he said firmly. “Go back to Korto, find Darrah. Whatever your problem is, he will be able to help.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  Gar moved forward, reaching for the communications panel. “I’ll contact him—”

  The Cardassian’s h
and shot out of his robes with a compact pistol in his grip, and he cracked Gar’s fingers with it, smashing them against the plastic. The Bajoran howled in shock and pain, clutching his broken knuckles to him.

  “What do you want?” Gar demanded.

  “Silence,” Pasir said, in a voice that was knife-sharp.

  He’s going to kill me. The thought pressed into Gar’s mind, sudden and hard. If I don’t get away from him, I will die.

  The Cardassian glanced at him. “Don’t do anything else,” he began.

  Gar threw himself out of his chair and into the alien, crying out again as he tried to grip Pasir’s gun hand with his ruined fingers. An impact slammed him forward, and he felt the aircraft’s throttle bar shift beneath him. There was a surge of engine noise, and the flyer’s blunt nose slipped off the line of the stormy horizon and down toward the ground.

  14

  The Tzenkethi ship drifted in the shallows of the gas giant’s outermost atmospheric layer, tracing faint eddies of hydrocarbon-rich mist around it. When in flight mode, the elongated fuselage resembled a smooth, seamless teardrop; the hulls of marauders of this class were inspired by ocean predators from the abyssal deeps of Ab-Tzenketh, but at this moment the clean lines of the vessel were marred by the vent hatches that lay open along its flanks. Absorption grids trawled the planet’s clouds for consumable chemicals and raw matter for the fuel stores, while mile-long antennae no more than the thickness of a hair trailed out behind. The patterns of radiation flux shifting between the gas giant and the numerous moons that crowded its orbit stroked the aerials, and the vessel drew the energy in to bolster its stores.

  The ship’s mission was almost at an end. The sortie had been a disappointing one, with little in the way of prey craft to pursue and nothing but dead space and distant sightings in between. In another half-rotation, once the matter banks were fat and sated, they would furl the antennae and close the grids before making a high-speed warp sprint back into Coalition space. Home base would be under their keel soon after.

  Inside the ionosphere, the play of the planet’s radiation belts ensured that the Tzenkethi marauder’s sensors were fouled by great drifting clouds of electronic fog; only a small pilot pod in a higher orbit, attached by a diamond-filament tether, floated high enough to be clear of the effects. It was the single crew member aboard the pod who detected the arrival of four starships as they emerged from the sunward side of the gas giant, their shields raised and their weapons running hot.

  “Compensating for atmospheric interference…” The Clarion’s deck officer worked his console. “Set. I read a metallic mass in the upper atmosphere, four thousand kellipates distant, quadrant blue.”

  “Weapons,” said Colonel Li. “I want synchronous fire. Program for salvo barrage, phasers and missile tubes one through four.”

  Lonnic’s fingers gripped the cushioned back of the colonel’s command chair. Standing behind him appeared to be the only place on the assault ship’s bridge where she wasn’t in someone’s way. She saw the formation of the reprisal fleet on one of Li’s consoles. The two scoutships in Minister Jas’s employ were keeping abeam of the bigger military ships. Their forward-mounted phase-cannon turrets lacked the power of the weapons on the battle vessels, but in concert they could still be deadly.

  “Merculite warheads loaded in all tubes,” reported the deck officer. “The marauder is reacting. They’re reeling in their observation pod. I’m reading an aspect change.”

  “Might be contemplating a dive into the troposphere,” Li said, half to himself. “Can’t have that.” He looked up.

  “Sensors! Go to full power, active sweep. Rattle their decks a little.”

  “Colonel,” said Lonnic, “are you going to fire on them without any formal declaration?”

  He didn’t bother to look at her. “I don’t recall the people on Cemba being given any warning, do you?”

  “No…but if the crew of that ship are not responsible, would you want it said that Bajorans showed the same callous disregard for life that the bombers did?”

  Li grunted. “Ms. Lonnic, I don’t give a damn what is thought about me. Our space was invaded and an atrocity was committed. If I had my way, it would be classified for what it is. An act of war.”

  “Colonel!” Her voice rose. She saw whatever shreds of authority her position as a ministerial adjutant gave her eroding by the second in the face of Li’s grim intent. “We have nothing but circumstantial evidence that the Tzenkethi were even involved!”

  “Sensor sweep complete,” said the deck officer. “I can confirm the presence of volatile stocks aboard the alien vessel, sir. Refined triceron, military grade.”

  Li looked up at her. “There’s your smoking gun. Do you want me to wait for a signed confession?”

  “Many warships carry triceron explosives,” she insisted.

  “Colonel, at least offer them a chance to surrender. Otherwise, we’ll never know the truth about what happened.” Lonnic saw the hesitation in his manner and she pushed on. “There could be more devices on Bajor, a network of terror cells, other marauders…There might be valuable intelligence.”

  At last the commander nodded. “I’ll admit, the thought had occurred to me.” He gestured to the deck officer. “Suspend firing countdown. Get me communications. Tell the Tzenkethi, stand to and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Transmitting,” came the reply.

  Lonnic felt cold sweat prickling the back of her neck as she watched the tactical plot on the portside viewscreen. The alien ship did not reply; instead it turned, rising up through the exosphere of the gas giant, gathering itself in.

  “Aspect change!” shouted the deck officer. “Marauder entering attack configuration!”

  “It seems we have an answer,” Li told her. “Weapons, track and fire—”

  On the screen a plume of brilliant white plasma lanced up from the rising shape of the alien ship and flashed past the wing of the Clarion.

  A warning shot? The question echoed through her thoughts, even as the realization struck Lonnic that the blast had been anything but that. On the tactical plot, the glyph symbolizing the Kylen blinked twice and vanished. Lonnic’s heart leapt into her throat. There were eight men on that ship, and she knew every one of them.

  The scoutship’s fate was sealed when her captain, inexperienced in confrontations with hostiles, moved too far out of the Clarion’s formation. The territory of the Tzenkethi—which the aliens classed as their ship and a generous measure of space around it—was being invaded and their automatic reaction was to take up a belligerent posture. The voices of the invaders they heard over their translator matrix heaped insult upon insult, daring to demand access to the marauder itself. The Tzenkethi crew’s reaction was instant and lethal.

  With a near full-energy bank behind it, the plasma projector released a murderous warshot that tore through the Kylen’s shields. Gaseous matter with the temperature of a solar core bored through duranium hull plating and opened the small scoutship to the void. The Kylen disintegrated, speared on a rod of sunfire.

  The second scout, the Pajul, peeled off and showed the alien her impulse grids, gaining distance as the Tzenkethi pivoted and charged for a second strike. The alien moved swiftly, turning to avoid a barrage of missile fire from the assault vessels as they detonated in a chain of proximity-fused explosions. The blast wall tore open the pilot pod trailing on its tether, killing the occupant, and slammed a kinetic shock through the marauder’s hull.

  Another plasma spear probed out after the Pajul, missing its mark.

  Lonnic clung to a stanchion as the Clarion’s gravity compensators struggled to keep up with the ship’s swift maneuvers. She pressed herself against the cold metal, willing herself to diminish. What am I doing here? She cried silently. I can’t stop this! I thought I could, but there’s nothing I can do! A childhood fear surged through her as the assault ship rocked under impacts from the Tzenkethi weapons. Lonnic remembered the ghost stories of her grandfather, o
f the tales of the dead lost in space who became angry borhyas that drew on the souls of those about to perish. She felt fear crowding in on her, her blood turning to ice water. In that moment she understood that all the power her esteemed rank could muster on Bajor was utterly worthless to her here; and in her mind’s eye she saw Kubus Oak’s self-indulgent smile, as if he were watching her life tick away and taking amusement from it.

  A panel across the bridge flashed with electric discharge and a body fell away from it, skin crisped black-red and wreathed in sweet-smelling smoke. Lonnic fought back a retch from deep in her stomach.

  “The Pajul’s taken a glancing hit,” said a voice. She couldn’t be sure who had spoken. “Venting plasma. They’ve dumped their warp core, but they still have mobility.”

  “We can’t help them,” Li retorted. “Bring us about, order all ships to put power to weapons. Sweep in and rake the target!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The pit of Lonnic’s gut dropped out as the Clarion turned sharply again.

  The inner walls of the Tzenkethi ship’s hull were studded with powerful field nodes that reinforced structural integrity and internal gravity envelopes. It was this design aspect that lent a deadly agility to the marauder, allowing the starship to perform actions that craft several times smaller would struggle with. The marauder pivoted, shedding the energy of velocity in a wash of radiation, snapping about to face the two Bajoran assault ships bearing down upon it. Phaser fire ripped across its shields, turning the transparent ovoid barrier orange where each shot landed. Backwash from emitter overloads ran down the length of the marauder even as the ship powered forward. At the last moment, the Bajoran ships broke away in climbing turns—but too slow to avoid the scintillating nimbus of the main plasma cannon. The Glyhrond, Clarion’s sister ship, lost meters of ventral hull plating as the blast blew out her deflectors and scorched an ugly wound along her belly.