A Time to Kill

by David Mack

  “It’ll buy us time,” Peart said as he covered Scholz’s faceplate, fully concealing the man from view.

  Peart moved with awkward, sliding steps toward T’Sona, who had just finished covering Morello. The petite Vulcan woman worked quickly and didn’t say a word as she and Peart gouged a narrow trench in the shifting sand just below the peak of the dune. As soon as Peart deemed it wide enough, he rolled into it and pulled T’Sona in beside him. Spinning sand devils, whipped up by the approaching hover-vehicles, spun across the top of the dune as the two Starfleet officers scrambled to pull the sides of their foxhole in on themselves. Disturbed sand washed over them in waves as the Tezwan hovercraft passed overhead.

  Peart lay absolutely still, his limbs entangled with T’Sona’s, her faceplate flush against his own. He heard the thumps of feet landing on the dune, and the muffled hum of antigrav engines cruising past.

  So far, so good, he decided. Now all I need is a plan.

  Chapter 28

  Tezwa—Mokana Basin,

  2220 Hours Local Time

  FLYING YELLOW BUGS with fat abdomens and terrifyingly large stingers swarmed around Riker’s head, filling the sultry night air with an angry buzz. He waved them away as he slogged forward, each step a struggle to dislodge his boots from the deep, clinging mud. The hollow gulps of his feet pulling free of the wet earth were, in turn, drowned out by the steady chorus of screeches, squawks, and croaks that reverberated through the primeval wilderness.

  Tierney and Barnes stayed close behind him, their own trudging clomps through the mud producing a regular cadence of guttural sucking sounds. Several paces ahead, Razka was clearing the path. He had brought a replicated machete, and was using the broad, angular blade to hack through the dense vines and thick undergrowth that blocked their path.

  The heat by itself was suffocating, and it was made worse by the oppressive stench that polluted every breath Riker tried to draw. The cloying perfume of blossoming flowers was mixed with the sickly sweet odor of decaying flesh and the rancid stink of rotting vegetation. The air was steamy with humidity, like the vapor rising off a vast cauldron of fetid stew. It all conspired to leech perspiration from every pore on Riker’s body. His hair was matted with sweat, which trickled in fat beads across his temples and dispersed into his beard.

  The bugs and the heat and the stench would all have been inconsequential had Alpha Team not been forced to shed so much of its gear simply to traverse the jungle. The path was so thickly overgrown that within a few steps every protruding piece of equipment—from air tanks to helmet valves to items on their belts—had become hopelessly entangled in the vines and snaking burrweeds. The only solution had been to doff all but their most essential weapons and supplies. After setting up the signal jammer, they traveled light and fast, trusting the night and their adaptive, dark green camouflage to protect them. That meant no helmets, no overloaded backpacks, no self-contained air supplies—and, for Razka, no boots. He had assured Riker that he moved faster without them. Watching the Saurian blaze their trail, Riker realized Razka hadn’t been boasting.

  A staccato burst of animal shrieks on Riker’s left was answered moments later by a long series of whooping caws, from higher above in the rain-forest canopy. An insect landed on the back of his neck. He swatted it away, but not before it bit him. The wound burned. It felt like a lit flame being held against his skin. He let out a small, sharp gasp of pain.

  Razka stopped pushing forward and turned around, concerned. “Commander? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Riker said, massaging the area around the bite. The burning sensation became less severe, but clearly was going to persist for a while. “Keep going,” he added.

  Razka resumed hacking a channel through the vermin-infested foliage. Every slash of his blade provoked eruptions of insects and birds, and all manner of crawling and slithering life-forms scattered away between his bare, taloned feet as he pushed forward, methodical and relentless.

  Riker noticed the air was growing warmer. Then he heard distant rumbles of thunder, harbingers of a tropical storm rolling in. Through the swaying boughs overhead, he caught glimpses of reddish lightning flashing in the north. He counted off the seconds until he heard more thunder, and estimated that the storm front was roughly ten kilometers away. A few minutes later, he caught another fork of lightning slicing across the night sky, and he counted off the delay once again. It was shorter this time. The storm was getting closer, and quickly.

  Ahead, he heard a splash. He pushed through a hanging tangle of leafy vines and saw Razka waist-deep in a murky bog. The weathered Saurian had a tricorder in his scaly hand, held at arm’s length while he scanned the swampy terrain ahead. He looked back at Riker. “Most of it’s less than one-point-five meters deep,” he said. “If we’re careful, it should be a slightly easier path.”

  Riker eyed the swamp suspiciously. “You sure it’s safe?”

  “No,” Razka said. “But neither is the jungle.”

  “Point taken,” Riker said. He stepped toward the swamp. The bank was coated in slime, and he slipped forward, arms windmilling. Rather than risk pitching headfirst into the muck, he sprung forward and jumped feet-first into the muddy water. He landed a couple meters to the right of Razka and promptly sank up to his neck. A choking swallow of filthy water splashed into his gasping mouth. He spat it out and coughed. He treaded water for a moment, then worked his way back toward the shallows. He glared at Razka. “I thought you said it was less than one and a half meters.”

  “You have to know where to jump, sir,” Razka said.

  Riker frowned, then looked back at Tierney and Barnes, who had stopped at the swamp’s edge. “Watch that first step,” Riker said. Razka coached the two engineers into the putrid water, then resumed leading the team toward the target.

  Riker hated sloshing through chest-deep filth, but he was grateful to be free of the suffocating closeness of the jungle. Overhead, the stars were blotted out by the sudden arrival of clouds, which were tinged pink with the glow of far-off fires burning out of control. Lightning flashed, and cut through the sky in long forks that arced into the jungle on all sides.

  Riker felt something sinewy brush against his leg, beneath the opaque water. Then it was gone. He stopped moving. “We’ve got company,” he said, looking down and trying to detect any sign of what had touched him. The rest of the team came to a halt. Razka drew his machete from the long scabbard slung across his back. Tierney and Barnes looked around nervously.

  A pair of tentacles shot up from the water. In a blur they snaked around Barnes’s throat and right arm. He was yanked into the air and backward, then down into the feculent murk. Tierney and Riker scrambled to aim their phaser rifles, but neither got a shot off before Barnes disappeared from view.

  In one graceful action, Razka sheathed his machete and dived into the darkness below.

  Riker and Tierney stood motionless, surrounded by the almost mechanical chirrups of insects and the rasping croaks of swamp creatures. An ululating birdcall echoed far away, then went silent. A cannonade of thunder tore across the sky and sent palpable tremors through the air and water.

  The swamp monster exploded from beneath the swamp and rent the night with a tumultuous roar. Ten of its dozen tentacles flailed wildly around Riker and Tierney, slapping the water into a dark froth. One of the two tentacles that had snared Barnes had been severed near the beast’s central mass, but the other was still locked around the young ensign’s throat. Razka clung to a spiny protuberance next to the creature’s fearsome, fang-filled mouth and resisted its manic, thrashing efforts to fling him aside.

  Razka severed the base of the tentacle that continued to strangle Barnes. The animal unleashed a bloodcurdling howl. Riker aimed his rifle and fired a long burst into the creature’s yowling maw. Half a second later, Tierney opened fire and added her phaser blast to his.

  The creature recoiled, pulling all its appendages inward—then wrapped six of them around Razka, who flat
tened his machete against his chest. Riker and Tierney hit the beast in its center mass with two more long blasts. Then the Saurian’s blade reflected a flash of lightning as it sliced through the suckered tentacles that had ensnared him.

  With a stentorian groan, the monster sank beneath Razka’s feet and retreated to its watery lair. Razka crouched chin-deep in the water as he backed slowly toward the rest of the strike team. Tierney helped Barnes back to his feet. Riker kept his rifle leveled against his shoulder and ready to fire until Razka sheathed his blade and said, “It’s gone.”

  Shouldering his weapon, Riker called to Tierney, who was scanning Barnes with a tricorder. “How is he?”

  “He smells bad, and he won’t be talking much for a few days, but I think he’ll be okay,” Tierney said. Barnes looked at Riker and pointed over his own shoulder.

  “Something’s wrong with your shoulder?” Riker said. Barnes shook his head, then turned so Riker could see his back. “You lost your demolition kit,” Riker realized. Barnes nodded with a grim frown. Riker exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Tierney, can we do this with just one kit?”

  “I don’t think so,” the slender engineer said. “We can probably disable the firebase with one kit, but we need two to cause the feedback pulse that’ll destroy the guns.”

  “Sir,” Razka added, “if we don’t destroy the guns, the Tezwans will be able to fire them manually. The Enterprise and the Klingons will be defenseless.”

  Riker pondered his options, then realized he didn’t really have any. “How long until we reach the base?”

  “Less than an hour,” Razka said. “Provided we don’t have any more close encounters with the local fauna.”

  “Tierney, you have as long as it takes us to get there to think of a way to do this with one kit.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said.

  Just then, to Riker’s complete lack of surprise, the sky broke open and drenched the night in slashes of torrid rain.

  Chapter 29

  Earth

  WHILE THE CITY OF PARIS slept beneath a placid dome of stars, President Zife paced anxiously, wearing a path into the off-white carpet of his elegant but minimalist office. He was dressed casually, in loose gray robes and soft, comfortable black shoes. He had always loved the panoramic view from here. Since his first day as president, this room’s grandeur had made him feel important, made him finally believe that he was the elected leader of one of the most important political entities in the galaxy.

  Now it felt like a gilded prison, lined with the artifacts of his imminent disgrace. Here, the desk at which he’d reviewed his chief of staff’s ingenious plan to lay a trap for the Dominion. There, the pen with which he’d signed the classified executive order that set the plan in motion. Surrounding him on all sides, one of many worlds whose trust he had betrayed and whose wrath he felt lurking in a future that was all too swiftly taking shape on Tezwa.

  The door chime sounded. “Mr. President,” his secretary Yina said, “Mr. Azernal is here.”

  “Send him in,” Zife said.

  The door opened, quiet as a whisper, then closed behind Azernal. The crimson-garbed man plodded in with heavy steps, his shoulders hunched beneath an invisible burden. “I came as soon as I could, Mr. President,” he said. Zife turned his back on him, finding the paunchy Zakdorn’s pale reflection on the window far easier to tolerate than the man himself.

  “How long until the Klingons reach Tezwa?” Zife said. He’d lost all sense of time since Chancellor Martok had delivered his declaration of war. Alone with his guilty conscience, it felt as if hours had slipped from his grasp, as if his every motion, his every thought were mired in hardening amber.

  “Just over two hours, sir,” Azernal said.

  Zife could hardly believe it. Less than two hours had passed since Martok had roused him with an unbroken string of vulgar invectives. Barely an hour since he had shifted the burden of this unfolding quagmire onto the proverbial broad shoulders of the Enterprise and her crew. If the passage of the past two hours was a reliable indicator, then this would be the longest, darkest night of Zife’s presidency.

  “What’s the Enterprise’s status?” Zife said.

  “Picard’s last report says that strike teams have been deployed to the planet surface,” Azernal said. “Their orders are to destroy the artillery system using commando tactics.”

  Zife nodded, silently impressed by the bravado of Picard and his crew. Ordered to conquer a planet with little more than their fists, they’d jumped headfirst into the fray. “What’s his plan for stopping the Klingon fleet?”

  “Unknown,” Azernal said. “His report said steps had been taken, but no details were provided.”

  “Best guess?”

  Azernal pondered that for a few seconds. “Considering the unusually close bond between him and his former shipmate Worf, I’d suspect the captain has enlisted the ambassador’s aid in some manner.”

  Zife wondered if Picard was negotiating directly with Martok. His brow wrinkled at the implausibility of such a notion, but he couldn’t rule it out. “You think Picard is working a diplomatic angle?”

  Azernal hesitated again, and averted his eyes from Zife as he spoke. “I think it would be in your best interest if I didn’t speculate, Mr. President.”

  Zife didn’t like the sound of that, but he knew that he’d dislike the sound of a blunter explanation even more, so he let the subject drop. He turned away from the placid nightscape of Paris and sat at his desk. “Computer,” he said. “Alterian chowder.” The replicator built into the desktop emitted a pleasing purr as it fabricated a spoon, and a white bowl filled with green soup. Zife preferred homemade chowder prepared with fresh sabba root and extra hilok leaf, but the tamer, replicated variety would suffice in a pinch. As soon as he lifted the first spicy spoonful to his lips, he found that he wasn’t hungry, after all. He dumped the spoonful back into the bowl and let the spoon slip from his fingers. It plunked into the soup. Zife pushed the bowl away.

  “We should redeploy the fleet,” he said in a grim monotone.

  “With all due respect, Mr. President,” Azernal said, “I think that might be a bit premature.”

  “Premature?” Zife stared at the Zakdorn as though he were trying to burn a hole through the man. “How many hours before the Klingons discover the truth? How many days until they declare war? How long should we wait? Until their fleet lays waste to Trill? Or Deneva? Or Earth?”

  “Moving our fleet now would betray our foreknowledge of the crisis,” Azernal said. “My wargames account for the great majority of variables, but no advance scenario can predict all the random events that might occur. It’s possible that the Klingon attack will destroy the evidence of our role in arming the Tezwans.”

  “Possible,” Zife said. “But not likely.”

  “No,” Azernal said. “It’s not likely at all. But if the worst comes to pass, a delay of one day will be of little long-term strategic importance. However, if circumstances unfold in our favor, a hasty act motivated by fear could reverse the gains that fortune yields to us…. Patience, Mr. President.”

  Zife found it difficult to concentrate. Visions of disaster mingled in his thoughts with imagined accusations and his own feeble excuses. He labored to draw breath against the horrible weight pressing in on his chest. His voice was pitched with remorse. “We had so many chances, Koll,” he said. “We could have stopped Kinchawn’s military buildup by fast-tracking Tezwa into the Federation….”

  Azernal sounded uncomfortable. “Mr. President, I really think we—”

  “We could have intervened to stop them from buying ships from the Danteri,” Zife continued. “Or I could have met with Martok, explained the matter as one leader to another, and brokered a solution.”

  “Mr. President,” Azernal said sharply. “Please calm down, sir. This isn’t—”

  “We must learn from our mistakes, Koll,” Zife said.

  “Sir, regret is a luxury we can’t afford.” The heavyset chief of
staff rested his meaty hands against the far edge of Zife’s polished black desk and leaned forward. “What’s done is done, and steps have been taken to make things right.”

  “Make things right?” Zife almost laughed at the willful self-deception Azernal was asking him to commit. “We lied to our allies and led them into an ambush. We armed a madman and did nothing to contain his ambition until it was too late. And what is our answer now? How do we redress our sins?”

  Lifting a padd from his desk, Zife sprang to his feet. He waved the small handheld device at Azernal. “Doublespeak! Commando tactics! Espionage! Why not call them what they really are, Koll? Why not admit we’ve sanctioned theft, lies, and murder?” He flung the padd at Azernal. The Zakdorn dodged the projectile, which clattered across the floor as Zife continued to rant. “Why not confess that we’ve made our officers into criminals to save ourselves?”

  Azernal’s voice was laced with cool anger. “We aren’t saving ourselves, Mr. President. We’re saving the Federation. We’re preventing a power struggle that would engulf the quadrant and squander half a trillion lives.” His voice grew louder and harsher. “So—with all due respect, sir—spare me your guilt, your moralizing, and your holier-than-thou rage. The people didn’t elect you to be their conscience, they elected you to be their leader. To make the hard choices, to give the orders, and, when necessary, to take the blame!”

  The verbal barrage overwhelmed Zife. The Bolian stood there, stunned by the ferocity of Azernal’s tirade. He waited several awkward moments for Azernal to recant, but the irate Zakdorn, though he seemed to have regained his composure, offered no apology. Zife’s knees wobbled. He planted his left hand on the arm of his chair to steady himself, then sat down.

  “You’re right,” Zife said. “All the regret in the galaxy won’t undo what I’ve done…. We can only go forward now.”