Star Trek: New Frontier - 017 - Treason

by Peter David

  Starship Trident

  i.

  Planet AF1963 seemed like nothing special, and Lieutenant Mick Gold, conn officer of the Trident, didn’t hesitate to say so.

  “Why would Selar be heading here?” said Gold with obvious disdain in his voice. “It’s just a big rock.”

  “If the woman’s gone out of her mind,” drawled Romeo Takahashi from ops, “then she don’t rightly need a reason, do she.”

  “Even insanity has a reason, Hash,” said Captain Kat Mueller. She had risen from her chair and was studying the planet, indulging in the no doubt fruitless task of trying to see the world through the eyes of a demented Vulcan. Mueller had witnessed many things in her time as the Trident’s captain, and as the executive officer of the Excalibur before that. But the notion of an insane Vulcan was almost beyond her comprehension. What must have been the stress upon her that would have driven someone as calm and unflappable as Selar to do such a thing?

  Part of her still hoped that this was an outsized misunderstanding. After all, it hadn’t been all that long ago when Admiral Edward Jellico was believed to have turned traitor, grabbing a prototype time vessel and making off with it, presumably to turn it over to enemies of the Federation. In that instance, though, not everything had turned out to be as it appeared. Perhaps that was the case here.

  She feared, though, that it was not.

  “Any readings, M’Ress?” she said.

  The science officer slowly shook her head, her huge mane sweeping back and forth. “Nothing out of the ordinary, Captain. If there’s some sort of presence there, it’s masking itself. My sensors aren’t picking up a thing.”

  “Captain, shall I assemble an exploratory landing party?” said Arex from the security station.

  Mueller pursed her lips, considering it. “Inform Squad A that they may be needed. Put them on post at the transporter room. But we’ll hold off on sending them down until we get a better idea of the situation. Our job here is to intercept the Spectre, not to explore the planet. Along those lines, M’Ress, how are we coming along with attempts to spot her? Between the cloak and that damnable ion glide, it’s like trying to pick a single breeze out of a whirlwind.”

  “True enough, Captain. And if we were simply cruising the area and trying to pick her up randomly, then we wouldn’t have a prayer,” said M’Ress. “The one hope we’ve got—and I think it’s a reasonable one—is that they’re approaching via warp drive. The ion glide is fine for slow approaches, but it won’t be nearly sufficient enough to travel the sort of distances they’ll need to cover.”

  “If it did,” Hash said, “then by the time they get here, the baby would be old enough to slap them around and make his own escape.”

  “Okay, so, granted, they’ll need warp to get here,” said Mueller. “And we can detect a vessel coming out of warp.”

  “Exactly. What they’ll probably do is cut out of warp space and allow the ion glide to take them in.”

  “They could even cut the engines entirely and just let momentum carry them,” said Hash.

  “Yes, they could,” said Gold with a trace of sarcasm, “but they’ll have to use something to control themselves or, best case scenario, they shoot right past the planet.”

  “The problem is,” said Mueller, “if we know they’re here but they’re running silent, we’re still unable to find them.”

  Commander Desma, the Andorian second in command, spoke up for the first time. “That’s not actually a problem.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Easy,” she said with a shrug. “The moment we detect their approach, we bracket the area that they’ve projected to drop out of warp space. With any luck we disrupt their power flow and they’ll have to come out of cloak.”

  “And without any luck,” said Mueller, “we blow them out of space. We won’t be doing much of a job saving the baby if we wind up killing him, will we.”

  “The odds are slim of our destroying the ship outright, Captain. It is much more likely that we would simply knock them out of commission.”

  “Are you willing to make that call, Commander?”

  Desma stared at her and then said, “It is not the prerogative of the executive officer to do that, Captain. The responsibility rests with you. But I would be derelict in my duty if I did not offer to you all the options that present themselves.”

  Nodding slightly, Mueller said, “Fair enough.” Standing next to her command chair, she drummed the armrest thoughtfully for a moment. “Arex. Set phasers to half strength. Same with the photon torpedoes. I have no desire to risk destroying them, but perhaps we can scare them into showing themselves.”

  “If a Romulan is operating that vessel,” said Gold, “they don’t scare. Trust me, I know.”

  “As do I, Lieutenant,” said Mueller, “but I still have no desire to risk—”

  “Captain!” M’Ress said suddenly. “I’m detecting an energy surge on the planet’s surface!”

  “What sort?”

  “I’m not sure. I—” She looked up from her station, concern on her face. “It has some common elements with our own transporter beams, but far more powerful.”

  “Shields up,” Mueller said immediately. “Go to red alert. If there’s something down there, we don’t need them beaming a bomb on board.”

  The shields immediately flared into existence around the Trident as the red alert klaxon sounded through the ship. “Trace the origin of that energy spike. See if you can—”

  ii.

  The armored figures began appearing throughout the ship. They simply popped into existence, without any warning, as if the shields were nonexistent. Engineering, sickbay, every corridor throughout the vessel. They did not appear to have weapons on them, but it was clear they had not simply shown up to introduce themselves.

  Security teams charged in from all directions, phasers drawn. Everywhere throughout the ship, the same scene was repeated. Security teams would inform the armored beings that they were trespassing, that their unauthorized presence would be regarded as a hostile act unless they surrendered immediately. If they did not, then they, the security teams, were prepared to use force.

  Each of the groups of armored beings had arrived in threes, standing in a perfect triangle, back-to-back with one another. They raised their hands, outstretched, in a “Y” formation. Interestingly, in every single instance, the security guards breathed silent sighs of relief. These creatures looked formidable, and no one was looking forward to engaging in combat against them.

  That was when the blistering force beams ripped from the palms of the armored figures’ hands.

  The foremost security guards were blown back, blown apart. The troops farther back opened fire, and they watched in shock and frustration as the phaser beams ricocheted off them.

  “Shoot to kill!” security guards were shouting all over the ship, and power levels of phaser beams were thumbed upward. Again they opened fire, with power intensities that should rightly have vaporized the armored figures.

  Nothing. The armor absorbed impact without any visible effects.

  The newcomers did not fire again. Instead they waded into the security forces, smashing into them with their fists. The intruders moved far more quickly than one would have thought possible considering the apparent heaviness of their armor. They weren’t lumbering. Instead they were catlike, pouncing upon anyone standing in their path.

  They tore through anyone and anything standing in their way. The crew of the Trident was too seasoned to permit anything such as fear pervade the air, but scarcely controlled panic? Yes.

  They tore through sickbay, medtechs scrambling to get out of their way, for they were healers, not fighters. But the attackers did not make the distinction, crushing all beneath their gloved hands or booted feet. Doctor Villers, the veteran CMO of the Trident, who made it a practice to always go armed no matter what because one never knew when a combat situation would arise, yanked out her phaser and opened fire. She experienced fo
r herself the sight of the phaser ricocheting off the armor. Then one of the armored figures advanced on her, grabbed her by the head, and twisted. She was surprised to hear a cracking sound, her own neck snapping. It was the last diagnosis she ever made.

  Crew members ran, but blood ran faster.

  iii.

  Frantic reports were coming in from all over the ship to the bridge. Mueller shouted orders, trying to boost the power to the shields, to block the beam that was apparently penetrating it at will and flooding her vessel with enemies.

  And then three of them were on the bridge. They did not enter through any door, nor did the humming of a transporter beam signal their arrival.

  Arex immediately pulled out his phaser and fired. The blast ricocheted and struck Desma, who went down clutching at her chest, moaning. One of them raised his palm and unleashed a blast straight at Arex, but his three legs made him extremely mobile and he dodged the blast even as he fired again.

  The emergency weapon array slid out of the side panel in the command chair. Mueller went for it, and one of the armored figures moved faster than she would have thought possible, smashing its foot down and crushing the tray of phasers beneath its boot. It swung a fist that backhanded Mueller, sending her flying. She landed near Mick Gold, who was on his feet and came between the advancing figure and the captain.

  Arex fired again and tried to dodge once more, but this time wasn’t fast enough. The blast of energy caught him on the shoulder and he screamed as one of his three arms was blown clean off. It flopped to the ground, still spasming, as pinkish blood poured down the side of his body. The armored figure swung its hand around, prepared to fire again.

  With an ear-splitting scream that was not a sound of panic but rather a roar of challenge, M’Ress hurtled through the air, claws bared, as she landed on the back of Arex’s attacker. Her fingers sought desperately to find some breech in the armor, something she could reach into and attack. Instead she let out a screech and lost her grip, falling backward. Smoke wafted from her. Part of her uniform and some of her fur had been burned away, for the armor had been scalding to the touch.

  The intruder that had assaulted Mueller advanced on her, and Mick Gold, even though he must have known it was hopeless, drew back his fist and punched the creature as hard as he could in the head. It did not so much as stagger the thing, although Gold cried out and clutched at his fist.

  The armored figure grabbed Gold by the shoulder, put its palm flat against Gold’s chest, and ignited the weaponry that was in its palm. Gold’s body practically lit up, energy blasting out from his ears, his mouth, his very pores. Mueller cried out his name as Gold hung there for a moment, as if the energy were suspending him in the air, and then he collapsed next to Mueller. She saw that his eyes were gone, burned away in the sockets, his skin blackened and crisped. Gold, she thought bleakly, those sons of bitches…

  She looked up at Gold’s killer, at this monster that had shown up out of nowhere and started slaughtering her crew. She looked up at where the helmet joined the armor, and there was a vent, a tiny vent barely the width of a fingernail from which steam was rippling.

  They’re superheated, they’re superheated from within and the armor regulates it somehow and that’s how they vent, maybe they have to vent when they’re in battle because their metabolism speeds up…

  In the next second, as the armored being started to reach for her, Mueller reached into the top of her boot and yanked out the slender stiletto that she always kept secreted there. The one that she had always carried, without exception, ever since attending the University of Heidelberg. The stiletto was in her hand and she dodged under its arm and to its side and rammed it with precision into the vent.

  The armored figure spun; if something clad head-to-toe in armor could look surprised, then this creature certainly managed it. Something liquid poured from where she had stabbed it. It looked like thin streams of lava trickling down the armor, leaving steaming channels behind it as it went. Mueller smiled grimly, and if this were to be the last action of her life, at least it would provide her some satisfaction. “The man you just killed was Mick Gold. Remember his name,” she said with a snarl. “Let it be the last thought as you die, you son of a bitch.” She lashed out and drove her booted foot into its chest, and it stumbled back, crashing into the command chair, bouncing off it and hitting the floor. It thrashed about, the two beings accompanying it looking down with what Mueller fancied to be stupid expressions.

  “Attention all hands, this is the captain!” shouted Mueller, and her voice boomed all over the beleaguered vessel. “They have a narrow steam-release vent on the right of their helmets! They’re vulnerable at that—”

  An armored hand swept in and caught Mueller on the side of the head. She went down as the remaining two intruders converged on her and brought their hands up. She stared straight into the weaponry in their palms that was charging up, preparing to unleash its lethal contents.

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  And suddenly their bodies began to shimmer. They looked around in confusion and then the hum of the transporter beams overwhelmed them and they vanished.

  “Hold on,” said Romeo Takahashi. There was cold fury on his face. He was manipulating the controls of his ops station. “And…there!”

  On the viewscreen there was a brief shimmering and then thousands, perhaps millions of bits of particles materialized and floated off in as many directions.

  “Took control of the transporter. Locked onto those bastards from here, beamed them out, and set it for widest possible dispersal,” he said.

  “Can you lock onto all of them? All these creatures running around on the ship?”

  “It’ll take a while,” said Hash, “but for you, Captain?” and he looked grimly at Gold’s corpse on the floor, “and for Mick? Sure. I’m on—”

  Even as he reached toward the ops station, it exploded in a burst of sparks. Hash jumped back, crying out, his hands convulsing in pain.

  Mueller started toward him, and then the air was suddenly filled with a glowing blue light. She pivoted and watched in amazement as something new materialized on the bridge, taking form before her eyes.

  “What the hell?” she whispered.

  Moments earlier it had looked like something else entirely, something bizarre and translucent and she’d barely been able to make it out. But as the glow subsided, she was stunned to see Mackenzie Calhoun smiling at her. Those familiar purple eyes were tinged with quiet patience and seemed far older than they normally were. Calhoun’s eyes, but someone else’s soul peering through them.

  He looked at Hash, who had crisscrossed his chest and shoved his hurt hands under his arms. “Are you all right?” he said solicitously. Then, without waiting for him to reply, he looked to M’Ress who was still writhing in pain from being so severely burned. “And you?” Again without waiting for response, he turned his attention to Arex. He frowned. “Oh, dear. That’s rather catastrophic, isn’t it.”

  “Who the hell are you?” said Mueller. She was still holding the stiletto. “And I’d answer quickly, because if you think that impersonating Mackenzie Calhoun is going to make me hesitate to bury this in your chest, then you are sadly mistaken.”

  “As are you, if you believe you have the slightest degree of power in this situation,” said the fake Calhoun. He sounded almost sympathetic. “Although,” he said as he glanced toward the fallen armored figure, “that showed extreme resourcefulness on your part. We were not anticipating any casualties on our side.”

  “There’s going to be a lot more if you don’t have your soldiers stand down.”

  “Soldiers?” He seemed amused by the notion. “Is that what you think they are? No, no, Captain. They are our helpers. Our brothers in spirit, if not in genetic makeup.”

  “I don’t care what they are. They’re killing my people and you will order them to stand down, or—”

  “May I offer a counterproposal?” he asked, as if a random thought had just oc
curred to him. “Why do you not tell your crew to surrender? If you do, their lives will be spared. As will yours. I am sparing your life even as we speak, because I am certain you realize how simple it would be to take it from you.”

  And suddenly three more of the armored attackers appeared on the bridge with as much ease as the others had. She moaned inwardly even as she gave visible response with a slight uptick of the corner of her mouth.

  “You are a leader, you see. My people respect leaders, since we are fundamentally leaders ourselves,” said the fake Calhoun. “Now…order your people to surrender. Order them to stand down before we kill them all.”

  She stepped toward him. Two of the armored beings stepped in, preventing her from drawing closer. “You will find,” she said in a low, taut voice, “that my people are extremely resourceful. You’re the ones who have committed an act of war. You surrender.”

  “It appears we are at a stalemate,” said the fake Calhoun sadly. “Let us consider, I have lost one of our people, as you say. And you have lost…well, quite a few more. So let us see, then, who runs out of people first. Are we agreed?”

  Starship Excalibur

  i.

  Burgoyne stood at the doorway to the captain’s ready room. Calhoun was seated behind his desk, his fingers steepled.

  “I think we need to talk, Burgy,” he said.

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” said Burgoyne and walked in as the door closed behind hir.

  ii.

  Robin Lefler stepped into the turbolift and said, “Deck Seven.” As the doors started to slide shut, a pair of slender hands reached in to stop them. The doors automatically opened once more. Robin looked up curiously and then her heart sank when she saw who it was.

  “Can we speak for a few minutes, Robin?” said Kalinda, and insinuated herself into the turbolift before Robin could respond. The turbolift began to move to the requested destination.