A Weary Life

by Robert Greenberger

  “Maybe,” she said softly. “The decoy was a brilliant but unnecessary idea. It put us all at risk.”

  “Even if it did expose the Obsidian Order’s treachery,” Riker added.

  “Then he gave up,” she spat. “Rather than go down fighting, as we were prepared to do, he just sacrificed himself and cost us the Defiant.”

  “We weren’t all that different in the end, were we?”

  “Maybe not, if you were as soft and self-sacrificing as he proved, but in all the wrong ways.” Her growing anger surprised Riker. He studied her body language, her expression, and, being a judge of fine women, came to a conclusion.

  “You fell for him, didn’t you?”

  “Not that he noticed,” she said in a loud, anguished voice. “Not even a hug good-bye. No, he had to first force me to give command to her, then he…kissed her and vanished!”

  The first “her” confirmed it was Kira. Tom kissed Kira. Interesting. He had no idea there was any spark between them. For a moment, he wondered what that must have felt like. How she tasted.

  Forcing his attention back to Kalita, the spurned woman, he gave her a look of sympathy that was met with disdain. She returned her attention to the monitor screen.

  “I’m just so damned tired of fighting,” she said, without looking at the commander.

  The conversation was clearly over, and he felt that he learned only a little more about what Tom’s life was like. He remained conflicted over that, disgusted by the actions his double took but trying to understand what compelled him. Certainly, his experience diverged enough that he could see the disillusionment with Starfleet. After all, Tom wasn’t the first Starfleet officer to abandon his post for the Maquis. Unlike the others, though, he accomplished a great deal that not only helped the Maquis but also improved Starfleet’s intelligence.

  A brief swell of pride filled him, the first positive emotion he had felt for Tom in ages.

  It wasn’t enough, though, since it still meant he stole the Defiant and endangered others to prove a personal point.

  “Commander!”

  La Forge’s voice had enough panic in it to put him on instant alert.

  “The Liberté is moving and I’d swear they’ve been spotted,” the engineer said from the pilot’s chair.

  Riker looked at the screen before him, noting the somewhat erratic pattern being employed. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  “Let me try something.” La Forge carefully took the Anaximenes out of position, rising above the asteroids that had hidden it for a time. Inching up at a very slow rate, Riker strained to find something substantive.

  “I see it, top right of the screen,” Daniels called.

  Sure enough, a small bit of Cardassian fighter was visible, and given the other ship’s position, it was more likely spotted. Now they’d be found, too, and it was time to act. He found himself looking forward to doing something proactive for a change.

  “Daniels, get back here and ready phasers,” Riker said, rising from the seat. “I’ll take it from here.”

  The two quickly changed seats, Kalita watching in silence.

  Riker settled in and brought the impulse engines on line. He kept them at minimal levels, just enough to maneuver for the moment, but warmed and ready if they needed acceleration. He switched sensor readouts and concentrated them directly on the fighter, gleaming golden against the blackness of space. No doubt, the second ship was right behind it, flying in some formation, which also took it out of the equation at the moment.

  Clearly, the Maquis ship was seeking some other place to hide, but it continued to expose its flanks to the Cardassians. Riker pushed the sensors, expecting the Cardassians to be charging weapons and targeting. They, like the Klingons, preferred to shoot first, interrogate any survivors second.

  “Commander, structural integrity’s at only ninety-four percent,” La Forge said.

  “Great,” Riker muttered. “Will that affect us in a fight?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Not the kind of reassurance I was looking for.” Riker swung the shuttle farther up, now glancing time and again at a new readout, this one of the hull integrity. A display above that changed hue, and the new data caused him alarm.

  “They’re targeting,” he said. “Brace yourselves.” As he spoke, he increased speed and changed his course, placing the Anaximenes between the Liberté and the Cardassians. After all, last he checked, pleasure cruisers did not come armed. The shuttle responded without complaint, and the increased whine in impulse thrust sounded perfectly normal.

  “I’m targeting their disruptor emitters,” Daniels said.

  “You’ll have one shot at it.” Riker continued to work the controls, fighting the urge to try maneuvers a star-ship—not a shuttle—was built for. Yet, being smaller and somewhat more maneuverable, there were certain things a shuttle could do better.

  “Here goes,” Riker said, increasing the speed and adjusting the angle, giving Daniels as clear a shot as possible.

  “Firing,” the security chief said.

  A single phaser beam reached across the void and impacted on the Cardassian ship’s shields. They were close enough that the impact would be considerable, and the best they could hope for was to weaken the shield directly in front of their disruptors.

  Then the shuttle twisted and turned, diving straight down before banking to port and ducking behind an asteroid just slightly larger. Not even a second later, a disruptor shot filled the space where the shuttle was.

  “Clean miss,” Daniels said.

  “Good, because if they made contact, we’d be in a mess of trouble,” La Forge said. “Integrity holding at ninety-four but the thrusters are heating up a bit more than I’d like.”

  “Must be the extra weight,” Daniels said, then looked abashed when he realized Kalita was right next to him.

  She gave him a cold smile. “Never discuss a woman’s weight when she’s in the vicinity.”

  “Siobhan says the same thing,” he replied with a smirk, then turned his attention to his screens.

  “Now what, Commander?” Kalita asked Riker.

  Good question. He scanned for the Maquis ship and saw that it was darting from asteroid to asteroid, avoiding exposing too much of itself to the Cardassians. The second ship was now visible and required extra attention. He had two ships to protect, and two ships to avoid or destroy. That latter option seemed more like wishful thinking to him. There were now nearly four dozen lives counting on him, and he needed a brilliant notion, something that would save them all. They didn’t have to name it after him, just note that it worked.

  He moved the Anaximenes behind another larger asteroid and then concentrated on the sensor scans of the area. Almost one by one, he studied the asteroids in the vicinity, pausing to quickly check the visual positions of the other three ships in the equation. Then he returned his attention as he felt the time pressure growing, because the Cardassians clearly had the advantage.

  Unless they could disappear.

  Without a cloaking device, he needed to cover the ships or find someplace the Cardassians couldn’t see, scan, or reach.

  That was when he spotted the asteroid some hundreds of kilometers away. It had a wide-mouthed opening with what looked to be a pillar of rock bisecting the entry to what appeared to be a cave. It was at an angle to the shuttle and tough to scan, but he tapped his screen and pointed it out to La Forge. His engineer studied it, checked his own sensor readouts, and slowly nodded.

  “All it would take is one shot,” Riker mused.

  “What would?” Kalita asked but was ignored.

  “That’d create a lot of debris,” La Forge added.

  “Could damage either ship trying to get in.”

  “Not if we give Pádraig target practice.”

  “You never use my first name; that suddenly sounds ominous,” Daniels said.

  “Nah, he only sounds ominous when he uses your full name,” La Forge said.

  “And o
nly my mother uses that. But I get the idea. How do we keep that from the Cardassians and clue in the Liberté?”

  “I’m working on it,” Riker said as his right hand rapidly tapped several controls. He took his last two minutes’ conversation from the ship’s recorder and turned it into a microburst transmission. Targeting the Maquis ship with a tight focus, he activated the communications system, and in less than a second, the message had been sent, too brief, he hoped, to be detected by the Cardassians.

  “I’m giving them three minutes to be ready. Mark,” Riker said. “Everyone hold tight, we’re going to be moving quickly on this.”

  Those behind him remained quiet, even Tregaar, for which the commander was thankful. He was tired. Five days’ travel in a shuttle would wear on anyone, and now fighting Cardassians just wore away at him further. If this worked, he’d definitely need some rest.

  First things first.

  As the seconds ticked down, he received no reply from Maass or Malames; then again, he didn’t detect any overt movement from their opponents. Daniels seemed set to do his part, so he just needed to keep the shuttle level and maintain a rate of speed that meant avoiding debris and ensured a smooth landing. He’d taken the time to do a more detailed look at their target and determined there was minimal gravity given the bulk of the dead rock. Its iron/nickel makeup wouldn’t necessarily save them from Cardassian probing, but if they went deep enough, wouldn’t hurt either.

  “Ten seconds,” he said. He sensed people shifting, and he imagined the air thick with tension even though the atmospheric monitor indicated all was fine.

  As the final seconds ticked down, he engaged the thrusters and began arcing the shuttle toward the asteroid and its inviting cave. Without raising his voice, he instructed Daniels, “Fire.”

  The phaser beam was right on target, shattering the pillar of stone that prevented the shuttle from accessing the cavern. As expected, various size and shaped debris floated in all directions, including directly in the Anaximenes’s path. Daniels then targeted and fired a series of smaller bursts, pulverizing the larger pieces that would endanger the shuttle’s hull integrity.

  All of which cleared the way for the Liberté to follow. He stole a glance at the tactical screen and was pleased to see the other ship moving into position behind them. So far so good.

  A second glance showed the Cardassian ships still farther away, still seemingly clueless to the new game, hide-and-seek. He smiled at La Forge, who cracked a grin back at him, pleased that this ploy seemed to be working.

  Within a minute, the firing stopped and Daniels gave Riker the all clear. Visually, the space seemed to confirm that, and his fingers increased the speed so they could get within the now-open asteroid as quickly as was practical. Their meager deflectors nudged aside the smaller rocks, and nothing seemed to endanger the shuttle. The gaping maw of the cave was inviting, and Riker took the shuttle right inside without letting up speed.

  The Anaximenes’s lights offered the only real illumination. The cavern walls were ragged; the opening probably carved out by impact with other celestial objects millennia ago. All he could see was stratified rock and more stratified rock in colors ranging from black to dull gray and back again. For now, though, it was a safe haven and that would more than suffice.

  The cavern stretched for more than a kilometer, and he took the shuttle toward the very rear and then cut speed, engaging the thrusters to begin lowering them to the uneven surface. Riker activated the levelers that extended from beneath the shuttle, telescoping based on sensor readouts to balance the shuttle so it would be even. They wobbled a bit as minute adjustments were made, but it gave him a chance to breathe and study their diagnostics. Overall integrity nudged down to ninety-two percent, but he could live with that for now. The thruster La Forge fixed seemed just fine.

  “Here they come,” La Forge said.

  Riker saw on the large view screen that the Liberté was negotiating the space just fine despite its larger shape. Of course, space cruisers were expected to be able to dock at all manner of ports of call, so this was just one of the less luxurious ones. They began to descend about five hundred meters from the shuttle, close enough just in case but with plenty of room if they needed to leave quickly.

  With that thought, he once more studied the tactical sensors and saw little; the metallic ores definitely played a little havoc. He wished the Cardassians had similar issues if they neared this cluster. Satisfied, he began powering down systems, leaving the phasers on standby.

  “How long do you think we’ll be here?” Kalita asked.

  “Until I’m certain they’re gone and we can safely leave the system,” Riker said.

  “And how are you going to do that if you used your three probes?”

  Good question. “I’ve got it covered.” He raised his voice and looked past her to the others. “We’re going to be here for a while. Everyone get something to eat from the replicator and try to rest. Mr. Daniels will be on first watch, so take your issues up with him.”

  “Thanks,” Daniels said.

  “Rank hath its privileges, Lieutenant,” La Forge said. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll catnap so I can relieve you in a couple of hours.”

  After wolfing down some field rations, Riker slumped in the pilot’s chair, closed his eyes, and drifted off into what promised to be an uncomfortable and unfruitful sleep.

  While Riker’s breathing evened out, Daniels finished his soup and recycled his bowl. As he retook his seat, which while comfortable proved stiff after long periods in it, Kalita looked his way.

  He wasn’t sure what to make of the spare, hard woman. She was passionate and certainly seemed to have her reasons for being with the Maquis, but he wondered when she would realize it was a cause that was doomed to fail.

  “You think of me as a terrorist,” she said plainly.

  “Not really,” he admitted. “Some of your actions are certainly questionable, but you didn’t blow up the Defiant or the Enterprise. A criminal, I suppose.”

  “Huh,” she said. “See, I never thought of my actions as criminal but just under the circumstances. The medical supplies Ro and I stole were for refugees and those harmed by the Cardassian governors.”

  “Still, had you asked, I suspect Captain Picard would have provided aid,” Daniels said.

  “He couldn’t. It would have violated the treaty with the Cardassians. And from what Ro said, Picard is a very disciplined man.”

  “That he is.” While he was still getting used to the man and his command style, he was certainly aware of the man’s legend. When he was offered a post on the Enterprise, he was surprised, figuring the captain had a long list of better-qualified candidates. Then again, he did obtain his first captaincy in the field so was probably more open-minded than other commanders.

  “You know what would have made a difference?” Kalita asked, clearly changing gear.

  “Tell me.”

  “When they began negotiating the treaty, maybe someone should have asked for our input.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Federation and Cardassians sat in their embassies or on some starbase or God knows where and coolly redrew the galactic maps. Did they have any colonist from the affected worlds provide feedback? Did the Federation bother to send ambassadors or emissaries to speak with us and get our opinion?”

  “I’m guessing not,” he said, imaging how he would have felt under the circumstances.

  “Ro knew what it was like to be betrayed by her own people after the Cardassians occupied Bajor. The things she had to endure, I don’t know how she did it, and then to be betrayed by Starfleet.”

  “Wait a second. I don’t know Ro or her story, but Starfleet doesn’t betray its own.” Daniels was suddenly feeling defensive. He was also lying—after all, he’d been the one to find Admiral Eric Hahn’s body, and he died only because Admiral Leyton and his people betrayed him. “Neither of us were there. Now, I do understand your anger at not having a say.”


  “That’s putting it mildly,” she said. “You know, once the DMZ was established, the Cardies armed their people to attack the Federation administrators. Did anyone call them on it? Did anyone come out and accuse the Cardies of abusing Federation citizens? Of course not. The treaty was signed, peace was established, and the war was over. There were other things to worry about rather than a strip of space.”

  “Your little strip of space was not the only political issue. Those Changelings are out to take over the whole damned quadrant.”

  “Our ‘little strip,’ as you call it, was our home! We had people dying and no one seemed to care.”

  Daniels patted the air before him and then jerked a thumb at the slumbering Riker and Geordi. She gave them a look and then stared at him, clearly not caring if she raised her voice. Both also stole looks behind them. Of the four Maquis tightly packed in the rear, only one, the Deltan, seemed to be awake and following the discussion. Certainly their voices traveled well enough given the confines.

  “So, you think its okay to kill in the name of freedom?” he asked in a quieter tone, hoping to lead by example.

  “We were targeting our oppressors so they’d leave our families alone. No one should lose a sister like I did.”

  “Allying yourself with the Klingons will save lives?”

  Kalita fidgeted with the cup she had finished with long before. She was a walking raw nerve, he decided.

  “Sure, we’re getting weapons and ordnance from them to wage a battle that the Federation refuses to acknowledge.”

  “You do realize you’re just cannon fodder for them?”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t know the phrase.”

  “In the old days on Earth, the first lines of troops that rigidly walked onto the battlefield were the first ones knocked down by cannon fire, but that allowed the troops behind them to get closer so they could eventually attack. To the Klingons, you’re there to take down as many Cardassians as possible, softening them so they can make the killing blow and probably claim the union’s territory for themselves.”