by David Mack
“I can’t believe you did that,” Scholz said.
Morello muttered in a shocked monotone, “I was kidding.”
“I don’t apologize for being right,” Peart said. “Now stop sweating, you’re stinking up my shuttlepod.”
Chapter 57
Tezwa—Mokana Basin
TIERNEY AND BARNES were the first ones out the door into the jungle, and the first to get shot by the sniper.
Riker wanted to help Razka pull them back to safety, but the cruel pounding in his temples was too powerful. His skull throbbed with an inner violence that sent waves of nausea roiling through him. While Riker lay on the floor and fought to breathe, Razka pulled Barnes back into the doorway and checked his vitals. The grizzled Saurian looked at Riker and shook his head “no,” just as he had done moments earlier for Tierney.
He leaned protectively over Riker. “Can you walk, sir?”
Riker’s limbs were leaden, little more than dead weights anchoring him in the doorway. He tried to shake his head, but merely succeeded in lolling it awkwardly to one side. Razka helped him sit upright. “We can’t stay here, Commander. The base crew is coming out this way. Do you understand?”
Fighting against exhaustion, against the muggy wet heat, against the siren call of surrender, Riker somehow nodded.
“We can escape underwater,” Razka said. “Can you hold your breath for thirty seconds?”
Riker could feel the words inside him, but couldn’t get his mouth to make the sounds. His jaw was slackening, and his tongue felt swollen and dry. In a huff of foul breath he slurred out, “Don’t know.”
Eerie animal calls haunted the tropical night and mingled with the reverberating, overlapping Tezwan voices growing closer from inside the base. A fever-tone of tinnitis rang in Riker’s burning-hot ears. Razka wrapped his sinewy, scaled arms around him. “Don’t worry, sir, I’ve got you. Take as deep a breath as you can, and hold it till I say to let it go.”
Relax, Riker commanded his body. Breathe. Concentrating on the simple act of pulling air into his lungs, he inflated his chest slowly, measure by measure, until it refused to accept any more. Then, as he clamped shut his jaw and devoted all his will to holding that breath hostage, Razka pulled him across the muddy ground and into the warm, murky swamp.
It was like returning to the womb to find it polluted by a creeping, squirming foulness. Pulled along through the slime-laced shallows, he was concealed with Razka beneath a blanket of thick algal scum. Riker marveled at how blithely he’d halted the tides of his breathing, as if he could simply abandon the habit anytime he wanted. As if he could make life stop and permit him to recover from its relentless indignities—the shaming of his friends, the murder of his father, Data being robbed of his emotional soul. All these blows crashed over him like waves assaulting a beach, wearing him down by degrees, eroding his will with unforgiving repetition.
“Let go.” His breath bubbled out of him as his head broke the surface. Algae and angelhair water roots clung to him like a new skin. Razka leaned close over him, covering his elongated reptilian jaw with a taloned finger. “Shh,” he cautioned. He opened his medikit and loaded the last ampoule of medicine into the hypospray. Injecting it into Riker’s throat, he whispered, “You’ll be able to breathe a bit easier in a few moments.”
Razka slinked back into the murky water, leaving Riker propped in the cradling bough of a tree that reminded the first officer of a Florida cypress. “I’m taking out the sniper,” Razka said. “Then we can hide until the Enterprise comes for us.” As he submerged, he added, “Stay here.”
Unable to lift his arms, Riker ignored the specklike insects that swarmed silently around him, hovering millimeters above the water’s surface. Though his head was still racked with pain, his thoughts cleared slightly as he once again was able to draw a normal breath and revel in its sweetness.
Choruses of flinty grackle-squawks and rasping croaks struck up a maddeningly loud musical duel, until a deep and terrible rumble announced the destruction of the Mokana Firebase and preempted the competitive duet. The blast wave faded, leaving only faint insect noise in its wake…and then the angry whine of weapons fire.
Harsh voices barked orders in the night, almost drowning out the muted swush of bodies wading through the swamp. Crisp, blinding-white shafts of light slashed through the wild undergrowth, crisscrossing one another in the darkness.
He recoiled as a hand locked onto his wrist.
“Hurry, sir,” Razka said, firmly pulling him forward and down below the level of the search beams. “Follow me.” Riker’s legs wobbled like rubber with every step. He felt at every second as if he were about to pitch forward and sink. One of the Tezwans’ search beams fleeted over Razka’s back, exposing a fresh and gruesomely charred grazing plasma wound.
Riker stumbled as a new surge of vertigo robbed him of his balance and left him feeling like water circling into a drain. He spat out the swampwater that rushed into his mouth. Razka turned back and labored to pull him back to his feet.
“Keep going, sir,” Razka urged. Riker couldn’t answer him, not even to refuse; he had nothing left.
The Saurian leaned him against another tree, unsheathed his rifle, and hunkered down in front of him. He lowered himself into the swamp, until only the crown of his head and the muzzle of his weapon remained above the water, poised to strike. Riker listened for the approach of the enemy, but felt his focus soften as a soothing darkness took hold of him at last.
Riker awoke to the hard slap of a hand across his face. Two blurry shapes towered above him, silhouetted in the night by searchlight beams. “He’s alive,” said the medic who had hit him.
Finally, Riker thought. The rescue team’s here.
His delirious perspective swish-panned in all directions. Then clarity returned for a moment, sharp and bitter. His gaze settled on the charred corpse of Razka, who floated facedown in the swamp. A cluster of Tezwan soldiers poked and prodded the slain Saurian with the barrels of their weapons.
The command officer behind the medic sounded impatient. “We need to get to the rendezvous,” he said. “Just kill him.”
Pulling open Riker’s camouflage jacket, the medic pointed at Riker’s uniform collar. “He’s a high-ranking officer.”
The commander gave an irritated sigh.
“You know what to do.”
The medic slammed his rifle stock against Riker’s head, delivering the first officer back into the arms of oblivion.
Chapter 58
Tezwa—Mount Ranakar
A HIGH-PITCHED, swooshing scrape whistled from the synthetic rope as La Forge’s carabiner streaked across it. The metal ring rubbed taut against the line with each descending jump he made down the belaying line.
The mountain trembled from a percussive boom, which was muffled but still audible through several hundred meters of rock. Several dozen meters above, a sharp blast resounded and hurled debris into the overcast sky.
His shallow arc pulled him back toward the cliff face. Extending his feet, he bounced into the impact, and pushed off again without losing momentum. His drops were longer and wider than he was accustomed to; Tezwa’s lighter gravity made the rapid descent easier to manage. T’Eama and Braddock were slightly ahead of him one moment, a few meters behind the next, but generally keeping pace on either side of him.
A humid gale blew in on the leading edge of a storm, then another sonorous blast hammered Mount Ranakar from within. Suddenly, and with a deafening thunder-crack of splitting stone, a fissure opened in the cliff face between La Forge and T’Eama.
Heavy chunks and jagged shards of jingle rock rained down around the trio as they quickened their pace, risking longer jumps and free falls to escape the disintegrating cliff face.
La Forge looked down at the swiftly nearing ground, which was now peppered with freshly shattered, razor-sharp broken rock. Bouncing into his last jump, he glanced upward. Several enormous slabs of the cliff face sheared away from the mountain, directl
y above the strike team.
No time to play it safe. La Forge released the breakaway clasp of his climbing harness and dropped the final six meters. He rolled into the impact, gritting his teeth as he tumbled across the jagged stone debris. T’Eama landed on her feet, with feline agility, and bounded away from the wall in a single graceful leap. Braddock tried to emulate La Forge’s technique, but he landed on a mound of loose stone that sent him sprawling hard onto his side. La Forge heard the bones in Braddock’s left arm break on impact.
Grabbing the stunned security officer by the collar, La Forge tossed him clear and narrowly dodged the massive blocks of shale that smashed down behind him, stinging his neck and the back of his head with tiny pieces of rocky shrapnel.
With T’Eama’s help, Braddock got back on his feet and tenderly cradled his shattered arm. “Let’s go,” La Forge said. “We have to get back to Wathiongo.”
Trudging back through the wiry scrub brush, La Forge palmed the blood from the back of his close-cropped head. Looking over his camouflage jumpsuit, he saw it was badly torn and marred with bloodstains, sweat, and dirt. Braddock was in even worse condition, while T’Eama merely had to brush the dust from her fatigues to look good as new.
As they neared the camouflaged shelter they’d hastily erected for Wathiongo, Data’s voice scratched through the static on La Forge’s headset com. “Bravo Leader to all teams: Bravo Team is clear. All team leaders report in.”
La Forge walked and listened while Peart and Vale checked in. As Taurik confirmed that Echo Team had “achieved its objectives and reached minimum safe distance,” the team reached Wathiongo’s shelter. T’Eama stepped inside and checked on the injured engineer with her tricorder. La Forge didn’t need to wait for her report—the perfunctory manner in which she turned off and holstered her tricorder told him what he needed to know. “This is Piper Leader. Mission complete. We have one KIA.”
“Acknowledged,” Data said.
Braddock, who had been listening in, looked puzzled. “Wasn’t Commander Riker supposed to do the check-in?”
“Yeah,” La Forge said, his voice chilled with a cold, prescient dread. “He was.”
Chapter 59
U.S.S. Enterprise-E
TROI STEPPED ONTO THE BRIDGE expecting to face the grim tension of a disaster’s aftermath. Instead she was relieved to find the mood one of guarded optimism. The young officers who surrounded Captain Picard seemed to be drawing their calm surety from him.
“Counselor,” Picard said. “Just in time.”
She moved to her seat and nodded to Perim, who was seated in Riker’s chair, on the other side of the captain from Troi. The planet Tezwa grew large on the main viewscreen as the ship dropped out of warp. The Klingon and Tezwan fleets all were posed in space, like a re-created image from a history text.
“We’ve entered orbit, Captain,” Magner said.
At ops, Le Roy worked quickly, analyzing sensor readings. “The guns and firebases have been destroyed, sir. All effects appear to have been implosive, as predicted.”
Picard nodded. “Mr. Wriede, any reports of casualties?”
The tactical officer peered at his console. “Scanning Tezwan military frequencies now,” he said. “Initial reports indicate limited injuries—but no fatalities, at the firebases or the artillery units.”
“Very good,” Picard said. Troi felt the captain’s relief at the news, even though he was maintaining a steady, calm façade. “Open a channel to the office of the Tezwan prime minister. And raise Fleet Captain Krogan, as well.”
“Aye, sir,” Wriede said as he began hailing the surface.
Troi turned to consult privately with the captain. “What’s our next move?…Reopening the dialogue between the Klingons and the Tezwans?”
“Not yet,” Picard said. “There’s something I need from the Tezwans first.”
Troi shot him a questioning look.
With a wry smirk he added, “Their surrender.”
Chapter 60
Tezwa—Keelee-Kee
KICKING IN THE DOORS to Kinchawn’s office felt good.
The rudely opened double doors crashed inward and rebounded off the walls with a bang. Bilok strode in like a conqueror, his pistol held level, his eyes sweeping the room for a target.
The room was empty.
Dasana, Tawnakel, and Unoro followed him into the office, all of them likewise brandishing small plasma blasters. The room was deathly quiet except for a soft, repeating double tone.
The four ministers moved deeper into the room and gathered around the desk. Bilok examined the computer panel on the wall. The small panel was surrounded by a discolored area the exact size and shape of the now-shattered frame that lay on the floor, its torn print of Tezwa’s historic Civil Charter trampled underfoot. The gently warbling double tone repeated twice more.
Minister Itani walked in. “They’re all gone,” she said.
Bilok needed a bit more information. “Who?”
“The Lacaam’i ministers,” she said. “They’ve fled.”
“Impossible,” Unoro scoffed. “They couldn’t all get out of the Ilanatava without being seen.”
“Well, they did,” Itani said. “If they’re still here, they’re very well hidden.” The double tone sounded again.
“Do you think they had military help?” Dasana asked.
“Of course they did,” Tawnakel said.
Bilok tapped a string of commands into the computer interface on the desk, calling up an overview of the planet’s tactical situation. “Well, that’s probably why.” He swiveled the monitor to show the other ministers the satellite images of sixty Klingon warships in orbit above Tezwa. The double tone continued to chirp softly beneath their debate.
“Superb,” Unoro said. “While we’ve been staging a coup, the Klingons have landed on our doorstep.”
“It gets worse,” Bilok said, his throat going dry as he kept reading the tactical reports that had come in during the past four minutes alone. “Kinchawn’s invincible artillery’s been destroyed, and most of the army has deserted.” After a moment of grave silence, he added, “We’re defenseless.”
Tawnakel pointed out one additional detail from the satellite image. “Isn’t that the Enterprise?”
Bilok finally paid attention to the singsong double tone as it sounded once more. Checking the com channel, he realized the incoming signal was from the Federation flagship.
“Quickly,” he said, pointing at the bare spot on the wall where the Civil Charter had hung. “Cover that.” He motioned to Tawnakel and Unoro. “Tawnakel, stand on my right. Unoro, on my left. Hurry!” Itani and Dasana lifted the flagpoles from their stands behind the desk and unfurled the flags. They held them up at matching angles, from opposite sides, in front of the empty spot on the wall. Looking around himself, Bilok took a breath.
As he pressed the switch on the desk that opened the com channel, he prayed to his ancestors that Captain Picard would be able—and also willing—to intercede on Tezwa’s behalf with the Klingons. If he’s not, Bilok knew, we’re all about to die.
Chapter 61
U.S.S. Enterprise-E
“KINCHAWN HAS BEEN DEPOSED. I am the new prime minister.”
Picard’s hopes for this discussion brightened at that statement. With the rabidly hawkish Kinchawn out of power, negotiating a peaceful end to the crisis might be remotely possible—assuming Bilok was better able to talk to the Klingons than his predecessor had been.
The main viewscreen was divided in half, Bilok on the left and Krogan on the right. Krogan’s eyes burned with barely suppressed fury, like a man trying to pretend that his hand isn’t on fire. Bilok was flanked by two other male Tezwan ministers, behind whom a pair of female Tezwans held up identical, diagonally overlapping flags.
“I am ordering our military to stand down,” Bilok continued. “Captain Picard, at this time I would like to ask you to mediate our surrender.”
Krogan bared his teeth at Bilok’s request. �
��There will be no mediation,” he said. “Your surrender will be unconditional.”
Picard hardened his expression. “I concur,” Picard said. “But it will be to the Federation, not to the Klingon Empire.”
“What!” Krogan’s self-control collapsed as he bellowed. Spittle erupted from his fanged mouth like lava from a volcano.
“Starfleet personnel destroyed the Tezwan artillery,” Picard said. “They also crippled the Tezwan fleet—and currently have control over yours. The field of battle is ours—on behalf of myself, the Enterprise, and the Federation, I claim the right of batyay’a. This world is now under Federation control.”
The captain expected that his invocation of the ancient Klingon privilege—which granted him exclusive dominion over the conquered foe—would infuriate the Klingon fleet commander even further. Krogan sat, stunned, and with an angry look on his face, for several seconds. Then his mouth widened into a sinister grin, and he laughed, loud and deep. He tossed his head back, chortled toward the ceiling of the veScharg’a bridge, then recovered his composure. “MajQa, Picard…you petaQ’Doj.”
Picard nodded to Krogan, then turned his attention back to Bilok. “Mr. Prime Minister, I await your surrender.”
Bilok looked to his fellow ministers, who all gestured their assent. “Captain Picard, on behalf of the people of Tezwa, I hereby offer our unconditional surrender to the United Federation of Planets.”
Bilok rose from his chair and stepped in front of his desk, then kneeled. “Fleet Captain Krogan, on behalf of the government and people of Tezwa, I kneel before the glorious might and perfect honor of the Klingon Empire.” Bilok bowed his head. The other four ministers stepped from behind the desk and lined up behind him. In unison they kneeled and lowered their heads, and the two women laid their flags on the floor.