by Peter David
Assuming she really did kill them.
That was, however, the least of Neelix’s concerns. Right now, he wanted to get himself and Kes as far from Ocampa as possible.
Luckily, Kes was light. He was able to carry her limp form over his shoulder. Taking care not to trip over any more bloody Kazon corpses, he gingerly made his way across the desert to his ship.
Setting Kes down gently, he opened the hatch, not remembering until after he did so that he hadn’t deactivated the security system. However, it didn’t activate. It didn’t matter much in this case, seeing as how all the potential security risks on the planet were quite dead, but Neelix made a mental note to have words with the dealer he’d bought it from at his next opportunity.
He placed his love gently in the only passenger seat, not wanting to do any more damage to her broken limbs. She moaned and awakened as he was going through the startup sequence.
Abandoning the preflight checklist, he leaned over her. Cold sweat pooled on her forehead.
I did it. I killed them all.
Neelix almost fell backward in his chair. That was Kes’s voice in his head! She’s never been able to do that before!
Her eyes fluttered open. “I can do it now, my love.” Her voice was a ragged whisper, and she began to cough, causing her entire body to shiver. When she was done, he heard her next words in his mind: I can speak with my thoughts and hear the thoughts of others.
His intended response was interrupted by the beeping of his ship’s alarm.
Peering down at his console, he swallowed. “I would love to discuss this wondrous new ability with you, my sweet one, but I’m afraid we have bigger concerns. Jabin’s mother ship is approaching the planet—and I suspect they will not be especially pleased by your recent foray into mass murder.”
You don’t approve of what I did.
“My dear Kes,” Neelix said as he finished off the preflight checklist and began takeoff, “I approve of anything that removes you from the custody of that foul Jabin.”
“You’re lying,” she said aloud, her voice slightly less ragged. “You hate what I’ve done. It reminds you of what happened to your people.” She leaned forward in her seat. “Neelix, I’m so sorry—I didn’t intend—”
“It’s all right,” Neelix said quickly. “We can discuss it later. Right now, we need to escape from the Kazon-Ogla.”
• • •
Neelix had purchased his ship for a fair price, and it had served him well, problems with the security system notwithstanding. But it was not as fast as a Kazon mother ship, and Neelix had barely left orbit of Ocampa when Jabin’s comrades came looking for him. And the fact that they broke orbit only a few minutes later, on an intercept course for Neelix’s own ship, meant that they had a good idea who was responsible for the massacre of their people.
“I’m going to try to lose them in the debris field,” Neelix said, and set course for it.
They’re expecting that.
Kes’s thoughts turned out to be accurate, as the mother ship had cut him off, forcing him to either stand to or head to the Caretaker’s station. The latter course of action was, of course, utter madness. The Caretaker was powerful and not to be trifled with. Everyone stayed away from that station for good reason.
But just at the moment, Neelix had better reasons for getting as far away from the Kazon-Ogla as possible.
As he steered his ship toward the Caretaker, his communication system rang out with a message from the Kazon: “You will not escape us so easily, Talaxian. We know you’re responsible for what happened to the first maje, and you will pay!”
Wonderful, Neelix thought, they think I killed Jabin.
“I’m sorry, Neelix.”
Unable to take his eyes off the scanners, Neelix said, “It’s all right, Kes—truly. What’s done is done, and at least now we are together. Assuming, of course, that we—”
And then he saw it …
… Kabor’s sessions of torture …
… Jabin’s endless questions …
… the agony in her arm …
… the blinding pain of Jabin’s final interrogation tool …
… the despair that Neelix would ever come to rescue her …
… and at last, he understood. Kes had no more choice in lashing out at the first maje and his people than a trapped animal did in snarling and biting at the hunters who trapped it. The difference was, Kes’s long-dormant Ocampa gifts had come to the fore, and so her snarling and biting had somewhat more consequence.
Still, at least Neelix now had a better grasp of what his dear one was going through.
I love you, Kes, he thought fervently, and he knew she heard it. Now he was more determined than ever to get them out of this. Neelix’s ability to escape death had become legendary. He was sure he’d survive this time, too.
Then another alarm went off, and this one Neelix had heard only once before: when he had purchased the ship. “If you hear this,” the dealer had said while activating the alarm manually, “head for the exits as fast as you can. This one’ll only go off if the ship’s not for the galaxy much longer.”
“What is it?” Kes asked.
Squinting at the scanner readouts, Neelix said, “I don’t know. The ship isn’t recognizing the energy it—”
Then everything went white.
2
Chakotay gritted his teeth as the Bak’rikan, the Galor-class vessel commanded by Gul Evek, bore down on his ancient flitter. Dubbed Geronimo by Chakotay, her captain and pilot, the flitter was operated by a ragtag group of Terrans and Vulcans who had dedicated their lives to the express purpose of making life miserable for Evek’s superiors. Right now, Geronimo was getting its shields pounded by the shots Evek managed to get in.
To Chakotay’s relief, the shots were few. His evasive maneuvers were fairly nonstandard—mostly by virtue of his making them up as he went along—and so Evek’s gunner had a hard time anticipating them.
The Bak’rikan fired again, and several consoles sparked. Not able to take his eyes off the display, Chakotay yelled out, “Damage report!”
From his left, Tuvok spoke in his usual calm voice: “Shields at sixty percent.” They’d been under fire together on any number of occasions, and the ebony-skinned Vulcan’s equanimity had always come to Chakotay as something of a balm.
The woman on Chakotay’s right, however, had none of that calm when she almost shouted, “A fuel line has ruptured. Attempting to compensate—”
Her words were cut off by Evek scoring a direct hit. The Bak’rikan had strafed the area with disruptor fire, forcing Chakotay to maneuver around in such a way that he was a sitting duck for that last shot. He let out a curse his father had cautioned him to use only in the most dire of situations. Under the circumstances, he thought, I don’t think Kolopak would mind….
The screams from his right continued. “Dammit! We’re barely maintaining impulse. I can’t get any more out of it.”
“Be creative,” Chakotay said without looking at her. He needed more than thruster power to get where he wanted to go. They were at spitting distance from the Badlands, and once there, they’d be home free—but not if he just had thrusters to work with.
“How am I supposed to be ‘creative’ with a thirty-nine-year-old rebuilt engine?” Her urgent words were a trifle extreme, even in these circumstances. Chakotay supposed she was simply feeling the pressure of being trapped between two worlds—that fact often informed her behavior far more than immediate circumstance.
Then the screen lit up with the boxy face of Evek.
“Rebellion ship, this is Gul Evek of the Alliance vessel Bak’rikan. Cut your engines and prepare to sur—”
Chakotay angrily cut Evek off. “Seska—”
The Cardassian woman to his right said, “I know, I know, be creative.” She let out a breath. “Thanks for taking that tralk’s face off the screen.”
Grinning, Chakotay said, “My pleasure.” Seska had been one of Evek’s most truste
d officers, which had made her defection to the Terran rebellion all the more meaningful. While her knowledge of Alliance protocols, patterns, and strategies made her an invaluable asset, they also made the rebellion in general and Geronimo in particular a rather big target. Evek didn’t take kindly to defectors.
On the other hand, because his pride was so damaged, he was unlikely to call for reinforcements, and because his reputation was likewise damaged by Seska’s defection, he was unlikely to get them if he called for them.
If we can just make it to the Badlands. The rebellion’s bases were located on several planetoids in the Badlands. Alliance ships powerful enough to shield against the storms were too big and unwieldy to maneuver. Flying in the Badlands required finesse, a quality one didn’t generally find in the average Klingon or Cardassian soldier. It was one of the things that had kept the rebellion going.
“Shields,” Tuvok added, “at fifty percent.”
“Let’s cut weapons power,” Seska said suddenly. “It’s not like we’re making a dent in their shields.”
Tuvok dryly said, “Considering the circumstances, I’d question that proposal at this time.”
While Chakotay valued Tuvok’s propensity for prudence, now was not the time. “Do it—take weapons offline. I need thirty seconds of full impulse to get into the Badlands.”
To his credit, Tuvok didn’t argue further, but followed orders. “Disruptors offline.”
Having spent the last several minutes engaging in ever more ridiculous evasive maneuvers, the last thing Evek would have expected was the flitter to go in a straight line. At least I hope that’s the last thing he’d expect, Chakotay thought worriedly as he input the course and then sent the flitter rocketing straight for the Badlands.
Born on a world populated by Terrans from the Americas, Chakotay’s home had managed to stay off the Terran Empire’s sensors. They had formed the colony in the early twenty-second century to get back to their roots after centuries of oppression on Earth, and a small collection of agrarians were simply not worth the trouble for the Empire to conquer. However, after the Empire’s fall and the rise of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, they became very much worth the trouble, as the Alliance saw any Terran world as a viable target and a fertile source of slaves.
Chakotay’s people had never taken kindly to being subjugated, and the man himself had eventually started resisting his overseers. Thanks to a now-deceased fellow Terran named Benjamin Sisko, he had the means to put actions to thoughts. Sisko had purchased the flitter from one of the contacts he’d made during his time in service to the Bajoran Intendant, and Chakotay and his handpicked crew had made as much trouble for the Alliance as they could, putting Seska’s intelligence and Tuvok’s computer skills to good use—not to mention those of his two crack engineers, who were probably cursing his name belowdecks at the moment. Their most recent mission was for Sisko’s successor as leader of the rebellion, “Smiley” O’Brien: assembling parts and power sources for equipment with which to build a warship whose designs O’Brien had stolen during a trip to a parallel universe.
Taking a second to glance to his left, he asked Tuvok, “Are you reading any plasma storms ahead?”
Without hesitation, Tuvok—who had, no doubt, done such a check in order to warn Chakotay to avoid them—said, “One—coordinates 171 mark 43.”
“That’s where I’m going.”
Chakotay didn’t look to see if Tuvok reacted. All he said was, “Plasma storm density increasing by fourteen percent—twenty—twenty-five—the Cardassian ship is not reducing power. They’re following us in.”
Smirking, Chakotay said, “Gul Evek must feel daring today.” He set a course that would take Geronimo near Tuvok’s plasma storm.
Out in open space, Evek had the advantage. Chakotay’s flitter could fit in Evek’s cargo hold, with plenty of room to spare, and the Bak’rikan’s greater size made it hard for Chakotay to harm it and to avoid its multiple weapons arrays.
But here in the Badlands, size was not a benefit. Chakotay’s more maneuverable vessel allowed him to cut it fine with the plasma storms that wracked the Badlands. The Galor class had speed and power, but it had the agility of a wet sponge.
The Bak’rikan started to take evasive action. Chakotay saw why a second later: A tendril of energy had flashed out from one of the plasma storms. Chakotay also took evasive action, and was well away from the tendril in seconds.
The Alliance ship wasn’t so lucky. The tendril struck it right in the nacelle. Chakotay couldn’t help but shake his head at that. Had the Bak’rikan stayed on course, it would have sustained only minor damage to the middle of the hull.
“Typical Evek,” Seska said disdainfully. “He never knows when to stop. Only a fool would take a ship that size into the Badlands.”
“Anyone’s a fool to take a ship into the Badlands,” Chakotay said ruefully. “Let’s try to—”
Suddenly a flash of white light blinded Chakotay. A second later, it was gone, and Chakotay was blinking blotches of color in front of his eyes. Next to him, Seska was doing the same. “Report!”
Tuvok, whose nictitating membrane—the so-called “inner eyelid”—had protected him from the blinding light, answered with dispatch. “Some kind of coherent tetryon beam.”
“Source?”
“Unknown—but I am now reading another vessel.”
Chakotay blinked. “What? Where’d it come from?”
“That is also unknown. The ship matches no design in the computer’s database, nor do I recognize it.”
The latter fact, Chakotay knew, was of more use than the former. Their computer had limited storage space, and ship recognition beyond what the Alliance was flying these days wasn’t a priority. But Tuvok had been a personal slave to a Klingon named T’Kar before joining the rebellion, and that Alliance official had been part of the Obsidian Order, the Alliance intelligence-gathering organization. Although as a mere Vulcan slave, he hadn’t seen any classified data, Tuvok was exposed to plenty of other information, including data on ship types.
“Chakotay,” Seska said, “a plasma storm is heading right for it.”
“The wavefront will intercept us immediately following,” Tuvok added.
Before Tuvok could finish his sentence, Chakotay had started plotting a new course on the fly, trying to stay away from the other plasma storms, and also out of Evek’s path, while not being hit by this wavefront. He barely found a course to take in time to avoid it.
The shield alarm beeped as the explosion of the unfamiliar vessel struck them. Chakotay hadn’t even noticed that the ship had been destroyed, so focused was he on avoiding its fate.
“That’s odd.” Seska was frowning at her console. “I’m reading a communication from near the debris of that ship. I think it might be a distress signal.”
Tuvok said, “Sensors are reading two small, cylindrical objects in the vicinity of the explosion.”
“I’m changing course,” Chakotay said, marrying thought to action.
Seska put a hand on Chakotay’s arm. “What are you doing?”
“You said it was a distress call.” Chakotay spoke without looking at her.
“I said it might be a distress call. We can’t just—”
“Those are escape pods,” Chakotay said. “We’ve got to try to rescue them.”
Tuvok said, “That course of action would be unwise. The ship was of unknown design, and the communication’s true nature is also unknown. It could be a trap. The logical course of action—”
“If we don’t take them, the Alliance will. I won’t let that happen to anyone on my watch if I can avoid it.”
Unbidden, images of his sister Sekaya flashed before his eyes: growing up together with her under Kolopak’s stern yet indulgent tutelage, learning the old ways of their people; both of them being taken by Klingon foot soldiers when the Alliance invaded their homeworld; Sekaya defying the soldiers, and being beaten for her trouble so hard that her left eye never closed properly
again, and her speech was slurred for the rest of her days; in the dilithium mines on Drema IV, both of them being worked to the bone and beyond, Sekaya’s once-happy face stunned into obedience, her once-proud voice unrecognizable.
One day, she fell over, exhausted. The Bajoran overseeing the mine blew her head off without a second thought, the disruptor making her skull explode. Chakotay later strangled that Bajoran, having sworn an oath on Sekaya’s dead body that the monsters who killed her would be destroyed.
Chakotay would do whatever he could to keep the Alliance from gaining another victim.
“Scans show one life-form per pod,” Tuvok said. “Two different species, neither recognized by the computer.” He looked over at Chakotay. “The Bak’rikan is changing course to intercept the pod farther from us. At best, we will be able to rescue only one of these aliens.”
“Then we’ll rescue one of them,” Chakotay said. “Can we get a transporter lock?” he asked Seska.
The Cardassian woman just stared at him for several seconds, before finally looking down at her console.
I am going to hear about this later, Chakotay thought. Seska had a certain focus, and she didn’t like anything to get in the way of the rebellion’s mission to bring down an Alliance that she saw as corrupting the soul of Cardassia.
But the Alliance corrupted souls of all kinds, and Chakotay would fight to keep as many of those souls out of their hands as he could.
“I have a lock on the life-form,” Seska said.
“The other pod has disintegrated,” Tuvok said. “However, sensors detect an Alliance transporter trace in the debris. It is logical to assume that Gul Evek has brought the alien on board.” Before Chakotay could comment on that, Tuvok said, “Plasma storm, bearing directly on the Bak’rikan.”
“Beam the alien on board and then beam the pod into the hold,” Chakotay said as he watched a wavefront strike Evek’s engines.
“Significant damage to Bak’rikan,” Tuvok said
At the same time, Seska said through gritted teeth, “Energizing.”