His death would come, S’Yahazah willing, courtesy of the small chemical injection-ampule she was even now concealing in her loosely closed left manus. Zzerrhezz, a fellow infirmary medic, had been able to synthesize only a very limited quantity of the substance in the ampule, so she knew she would have only one opportunity to use it.
Provided, of course, that Vrezsarr the engineer sent her the appropriate “go” signal, thus alerting her that he had just similarly dispatched his own specified war-caster target, further diminishing Gog’resssh’s skeleton crew.
After that, everything would depend on whether she could summon the nerve to rise and cover the few short steps that separated her post from Sk’salissk’s without giving him sufficient advance warning to enable him to evade or resist her attack.
She willed her left manus to stop shaking, but the effort met with only partial success.
Just when she was beginning to wonder whether something had gone terribly wrong down in the engine room, Vrezsarr’s icon appeared on her panel like a silent apparition. Her fellow tech-caster had taken an irrevocable action, one that would surely get him killed—and might even get her killed as well—should she fail now to do her part before Gog’resssh and his raiding party returned to the S’alath.
Steeling herself and her flagging courage one last time, Z’shezhira rose from her seat and moved toward her target.
SHUTTLECRAFT BEIDERBECKE
With a quick glance over her shoulder, Vale confirmed that the small transporter stage was clear. She breathed a silent prayer that the rest of the away team had materialized on the planet’s surface without incident—and that the emergency batteries that had powered the team’s beam-out would continue to function for the few precious additional moments she needed.
Vale had one last task to complete before she’d get the chance to find out. Bringing the shuttlecraft abruptly about, she locked the helm on a collision course with the Gorn vessel, which arced high above Hranrar’s dayside surface. Each of the aggressor ship’s glowing forward disruptor tubes gaped like the maw of a leviathan as the gap between the two ships closed rapidly.
Almost simultaneously, Vale entered two final commands: the timed detonation of the photon torpedo that remained lodged in the Beiderbecke’s launcher, and the transporter’s Mayday ENERGIZE command.
Half a heartbeat later, a shimmering curtain of light appeared, immediately followed by a flash of optic-nerve-searing brilliance.
U.S.S. TITAN
“Mister Tuvok!” Riker shouted as he leaned forward in his command chair. “How long until we’re within weapons range?”
“Twenty-two seconds, Captain,” came the Vulcan’s crisp response.
“We’re within visual of the Beiderbecke, sir,” Lieutenant Rager said from ops.
“On screen.”
The coin-sized but rapidly growing disc of Hranrar on the forward viewer abruptly vanished, replaced by a high-resolution image of a Starfleet shuttlecraft trading salvoes of weapons fire with an aggressively-postured warship that had a long, narrow primary hull and at least four clearly identifiable engine nacelles.
“Ten seconds until weapons range,” said Tuvok.
“Ready phasers, Commander,” Riker said.
The shuttlecraft abruptly switched from evasion to a pursuit trajectory that appeared to bring the two vessels into dangerous proximity. Though he knew Olivia Bolaji was arguably the most experienced combat pilot serving aboard Titan, he seized the arms of his chair in dual death grips.
Then he saw the flash of light and the ensuing fireball.
HRANRAR
Troi experienced a rush of gratitude when the transporter beam released her into the relative safety of the open air of a planetary surface. She turned to her right and saw the spires and minarets of a Hranrarii city. Looking in the opposite direction, she was further relieved to see several other members of the away team—Lieutenant Sortollo, and Ensigns Modan, Dakal, Evesh, and Bolaji—none of whom looked any more the worse for wear than she felt. At their feet she saw the customary emergency gear associated with a hasty bailout: A bulky but at least somewhat portable subspace transceiver; a duffel filled with field rations; another duffel crammed with thermal clothing; and a small carrying case that contained various tools, Dakal’s data modules, the hand phasers, and the spare power packs.
Suddenly an alarming thought occurred to her. She turned in a full circle, praying she was wrong.
“Where the hell is Commander Vale?” Sortollo said just before Troi could articulate the same question.
“Look!” Evesh said, pointing with one chubby, hirsute hand toward the beautiful yet baleful fireball that had just pierced Hranrar’s nearly clear blue skies.
“Oh, no,” Troi said with a gasp as a wave of reptilian surprise and fear washed over her, threatening to knock her from her feet. Although the emotional onslaught stopped as quickly as it had begun, doubtless scattered by the deadly red-orange blossom overhead, its fading echoes pounded at her psyche like seismic aftershocks.
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH AUXILIARY VESSEL DEWCLAW
“The cargo hold grows overcrowded,” Zegrroz’rh warned, raising his voice to be heard above the mewling bleats of the food animals. “Perhaps we should depart now before we are discovered.”
Gog’resssh paused in his labors at the console long enough to give the cargo manifest assembled by his troopers in the hold a cursory glance. Reluctantly, he was forced to agree with his half-blind second. Though the need for live meatbeasts and medicine was urgent, only so much could be crammed into a single auxiliary vessel’s hold.
“Very well. Take us back the way we came. Discreetly.”
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
Sk’salissk’s steel-muscled hand shot out and grabbed Z’shezhira almost before she realized what was happening.
“What are you holding in your claws?” the helmrunner demanded.
The injection-ampule fell from her suddenly nerveless manus and clattered impotently to the deck.
“An injection mechanism,” Sk’salissk growled, his tones colored by both dismissiveness and disgust. “You sought to poison me?”
Sk’salissk released her while she searched for the words she needed to reply. But before she could complete the process, his other manus lashed out, striking her between the temple and her right cranial crest before she even saw the blow coming. Z’shezhira crumpled to the deck, her facial scales making sudden, painful contact with the command deck’s unyielding duranium grillwork.
Even after she came to rest, facedown, the universe continued to spin around Z’shezhira, whose mind was suddenly bereft of all thoughts save one:
I will never see S’syrixx again.
Then the alarm sounded, startling her.
GORN HEGEMONY RECONNAISSANCE VESSEL SSEVARRH
“Captain Krassrr!” cried a junior member of the command-deck staff.
“Speak,” Krassrr growled. “Have you received word from the Zzrorss?”
“Not since First Myrmidon Rraarsk reported having crippled the mammal vessel, Captain.”
Krassrr didn’t much like Rraarsk’s silence, though he knew it could have been a simple matter of momentary interference radiating from the substantial explosion that the sensors detected all the way from the other side of the planet; the detonation had been the natural accompaniment to the delivery of Rraarsk’s death blow.
Krassrr liked even less the idea of diverting more of his forces away from the task of protecting the precious eco-sculptor.
“What is it, then?” he rumbled, strongly implying that whatever tidings the junior officer bore had better not be trivial.
“Sensors have picked up a faint impulse wake, Captain. It forms a trail from one of our support vessels to the planet’s northern polar region, where it is obscured by the local magnetic field. And one of the property officers has just reported significant losses in the fleet’s supply stores.”
“Thieving mammals,” Krassrr hissed, h
is teeth flashing like daggers across his wide mouth. “Tie-tan must be nearby. Find it!”
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
The next blow Z’shezhira had anticipated never landed. Very cautiously, she turned her head and tried to look up.
Sk’salissk had moved away from her, his rage forgotten, at least for the moment. He faced the main viewer, which displayed an image of an expanding fireball low on the horizon, as seen through the extreme northern reaches of the Hranrarii atmosphere, the S’alath’s current hiding place of choice.
Though she couldn’t be certain, Z’shezhira thought that the fireball looked very much like an exploding space vessel; having been forced to serve the whims of First Myrmidon Gog’resssh for as long as she had, she had seen more than a few such sights.
As she began trying to get to her feet, one of her manus fell upon the injection ampule, which Sk’salissk appeared to have forgotten. She grabbed it as she rose and readied it for use.
Sk’salissk moved to a nearby console, at which he appeared to be studying the results of sensor scans on the still-expanding explosion. But he remained oblivious, showing her his armored back.
With a dreamlike sense of unreality, she set aside all doubt and hesitation in order to grasp at a second chance to be reunited with her beloved S’syrixx.
Leaping upon Sk’salissk’s back, she jammed the business end of the injection ampule into the relatively delicate flesh at the junction between his jaw and neck.
Another alarm sounded, startling her. A harsh rasp of a voice followed it. Though distorted by the ship’s communications system, its firm, obedience-generating quality was undiminished.
“Dewclaw to S’alath. This is First Myrmidon Gog’resssh. Open the auxiliary vehicle bay immediately.”
For several protracted moments, Z’shezhira stood stock-still. As long as all the tech-casters aboard stuck to their plan and kept the auxiliary vehicle bay shuttered, Gog’resssh and what remained of his crew would be neutralized, either trapped belowdecks or locked out of the ship entirely. Then, once Vrezsarr the engineer put some distance between the S’alath and Gog’resssh’s small vessel, the larger ship’s weapons systems would swiftly put down Gog’resssh and his boarding party while the transporters could be used strategically to get rid of the remaining war-casters.
It was a good plan. All she had to do was stick to it.
“If the auxiliary vehicle bay is not opened immediately,” Gog’resssh thundered, “then I will ram it at this vessel’s top speed. Everyone aboard the S’alath and the Dewclaw will die.”
Z’shezhira shuddered. She did not enjoy his anger. But neither could she bring herself to take the simple expedient of shutting down the comm channel.
We have a good plan, she reminded herself. We merely have to follow it.
But Vrezsarr might not be able to defeat Gog’resssh’s patchwork of ersatz command codes in time to prevent the first myrmidon from making good on his threat. And Z’shezhira felt certain that Gog’resssh was mad enough to actually go through with it.
Should that happen, she truly would never see S’syrixx again.
“Whoever takes immediate action to bring me back aboard will be rewarded,” said the commanding voice.
Against her own better judgment, and in defiance of the internal warning klaxons that coursed up and down her spinal column, her manus began moving, as though propelled by a will of its own, across the late, unlamented Sk’salissk’s control panel. . . .
U.S.S. TITAN
“You do beautiful work, Mister S’syrixx,” Ranul Keru said. He had watched the deceptively thick-thewed hands of the Gorn as they moved the slender brushes across the canvas with a liberal mixture of speed and deliberation.
“You say you’ve never painted before?” Lieutenant Qontallium asked, sounding sincerely impressed.
“Not with materials such as these,” S’syrixx said, working at the easel without pausing. “But I have created many similar renderings using electronic media, such as your own padds.”
Keru knew that S’syrixx wasn’t boasting. The creature that he and Qontallium were interviewing/guarding was a member of a Gorn arts subcaste, which in turn was part of the larger technological caste. And Keru had seen the many renderings and diagrams that S’syrixx had generated during the first night after his arrival aboard Titan.
But this, the end result of S’syrixx’s present labors, possessed a sensitivity that bore no more relation to his previous effort than a hastily hand-rendered star map did to the immersive three-dimensional work of Trillius Prime’s ancient holomasters.
The canvas carried an intensely photorealistic likeness of the head and shoulders of a Gorn. Despite the creature’s obvious alienness, its golden, almost feline eyes carried none of the cold-blooded fury that Keru usually associated with the Gorn people in general. The being in the depiction almost looked . . . kind.
“Who is she?” Qontallium said, anticipating the question Keru had been about to ask.
“Her name is . . . was . . . Z’shezhira,” S’syrixx said. “She is lost to me now.”
Keru nodded silently. Having only recently come to terms with the death of his life partner, Sean Hawk, during a Gorn assault some nine years ago, he felt no need to pry any further into S’syrixx’s grief. Keru saw that Qontallium, whose own loss to the Borg was far more recent and raw, was doing the same, his large eyes appearing to moisten with unshed tears.
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
When Gog’resssh confronted Z’shezhira at her station on the command deck, he sounded preternaturally calm. For some unaccountable reason, she found that his current demeanor frightened her far more deeply than had even the most capricious and violent of his earlier paranoid tantrums.
“I could not help but notice,” the first myrmidon said, “that it was your authorization code that opened the auxiliary vessel bay for me.”
Z’shezhira focused her gaze upon the deck grillwork beneath her bare, clawed feet. While she was ostensibly putting on a show of deference before a cross-caste superior, she was actually averting her eyes in shame over her weakness—and to avoid making contact with the soul-piercing lone good eye of the ever-suspicious Second Myrmidon Zegrroz’rh, who kept staring at her from the post of the late and unlamented helmrunner, Sk’salissk.
“I do not forget my friends,” Gog’resssh said as he paced the deck near Z’shezhira with heavy but deliberate steps. “I do not hesitate to reward those who show loyalty toward me and my cause. That is why I have allowed you to remain at your post.”
“Thank you, First Myrmidon,” she said, the words an exercise in the purest form of survival-mandated rote behavior. In the tiny, private space in her head that she reserved for believing herself to be unconstrained and unbent by the bullying war-caster’s duranium will, she wondered precisely what Gog’resssh’s cause really amounted to other than a private Hegemony—a new autocracy at the summit of whose power structure would sit Gog’resssh and his fellow radiation-addled survivors of the Sazssgrerrn catastrophe.
“It may not be wise to count this one among your friends, First Myrmidon,” said Zegrroz’rh. “This tech-caster killed Sk’salissk during our brief absence, here on this very command deck. She is as guilty as the other mutineers.”
“I already explained that,” Z’shezhira said, putting as much confidence and defiance as she could muster behind the lie. “Sk’salissk attempted to take liberties with me. I merely did my duty to my caste.”
“So you say,” Zegrroz’rh growled. “Unfortunately, the only other witness to the . . . incident can neither corroborate nor dispute your story.”
“Were I truly guilty of anything, would I have let you back aboard the S’alath after the mutineers had seized it?” she asked, hoping to score some points for sheer brazenness, a trait that the war-casters seemed to admire in other contexts.
“It does not matter,” Gog’resssh told Zegrroz’rh, dismissing his lieutenant’s concerns with a wave of one sha
rp-clawed manus. He approached Z’shezhira, his face drawing close enough to hers to force her to suppress a wince at the foulness of his breath. She noted a new scar on the scales of his neck, probably a disruptor burn received during the brief firefight that had just concluded.
“I wish you to understand the rare privilege I have granted you,” he said, his deep rumbling voice reduced to a sibilant whisper as freighted with deadly promise as the hiss of a leaky airlock seal. “I trust that Zegrroz’rh has informed you that I authorized him to put four of your tech-caster colleagues off of this ship, once we regained control of it.”
“He did,” Z’shezhira said quietly. The second myrmidon had seemed to revel not only in carrying out Gog’resssh’s death order with alacrity, but he had also made no effort to conceal the pleasure he had taken in her muted but noticeable reaction to the dispiriting news.
Zegrroz’rh flashed a grin that resembled a large collection of crookedly sharpened bone daggers. “Do not be concerned for your friends, noble Z’shezhira. I am certain that their suffering lasted no longer than it took for their lungs to explode into the void.”
Four of my colleagues dead, she thought, miserable. All because of my failure of nerve.
“Before your medic friend Zzerrhezz tumbled out the airlock, he implicated you as a co-conspirator,” Zegrroz’rh said. “The engineer Vrezsarr said much the same thing when his turn came to die.”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 02: Seize the Fire Page 24