by David Mack
“Understood. Tajny out.”
The channel closed abruptly, and the pod’s comm system reverted to its normal standby mode. Tran reset the system to send distress signals on all Tzenkethi military frequencies. Then he breathed a heavy sigh and slumped against one side of the hexagonal pod, opposite Choska.
Outside the view ports, the endless night wheeled past, the scattered stars transformed into blurs by the slow but erratic tumbling of the pod.
Inside the cramped emergency vehicle, an awkward silence festered between Tran and Choska. The Tzenkethi woman studied him with eyes as cold as they were lovely. She regarded him the same way she scrutinized experiments that deviated too far from her predictions.
Tran had no idea what to say to her, so he felt great relief when at last she spoke. “What were you thinking, Tran?”
“When?”
“Back on the station. When you told the intruders, ‘Do what you want to me. Don’t hurt Doctor Choska.’ What was that all about?”
Her question left him flummoxed. Then he realized the truth: I have nothing left to lose.
He had warned the Tajny and given its Spetzkar a fighting chance to defend themselves and find a new route home, but after surrendering Ikkuna Station to the intruders, his life would be forfeit if he ever returned to face his superiors in the Confederacy. His only hope of survival now lay in having the courage to do what he had wanted to do from the start.
He took off his helmet. Choska stared, wide-eyed, at the proud lines of his strong jaw, at his skin the color of rich, wet loam ready for planting, and into his chartreuse eyes. He peeled off his gloves and cast them aside. Then he reveled in the mild shock that came from touching her flesh as he kneeled and took her hand in his. The truth would be spoken, come what may.
“Dear, sweet Choska . . . my real name is Herlok Seltran, scion of the Clan Lokaar, born in the frozen north of Pacluro Prime, and I have something I need to tell you:
“I love you—and I want to defect.”
* * *
Leading the Breen astray inside the station had proved easier than Sarina had expected. Nearly half the force responding to the attack on the control room had detoured to pursue her, Webb, and Kitsom. Rather than engage the Breen directly, the trio of Section 31 agents had led them on a breakneck sprint through the station’s upper levels—a chase that terminated by design in a dead end. As soon as they turned the last corner, Webb’s order came through on their private comm channel via their Breen helmets: “Recall beacons!”
Still running, Sarina activated the automated signaling device on her uniform’s forearm. With one stride she was in the corridor, racing toward a solid gray wall. Her next step carried her off the transporter platform inside the Królik. Kitsom and Webb bounded off the platform and sped past her, pulling off their helmets as they dashed out the door. “C’mon,” Kitsom said. “We need to get to the rift!” She followed the two men on their mad dash back to the command deck, tossing aside her own helmet as they took their posts.
Kitsom dropped his helmet on the deck by the helm as he sat down and started tapping in commands. “Ventral hatch shut! Impulse engines online!”
Webb set his helmet atop the tactical station as he worked. “Disruptors charged! Firing!”
The ship’s main disruptor bank fired with a furious shriek. Sarina winced at the flash of light on the whited-out main viewer. The glare faded to reveal the absence of the outer docking bay doors—because Webb had just vaporized them. He called to Kitsom, “Clear!”
Sarina felt the deck lurch ever so slightly as Kitsom engaged the impulse drive. The inertial dampeners lagged by a few thousandths of a second, apparently confused by the Królik’s sudden departure from the station’s artificial gravity into zero-g deep space. “Coming about on course for the rift,” Kitsom said.
“Hold at thirty thousand kilometers from the station,” Webb said. “Warp drive to standby.” He looked at Sarina. “Scan the rift. Make sure it’s stable before we try to cross it.”
“On it.” Sarina pivoted toward the sensor console and made a comprehensive sensor sweep of the interdimensional rip. “Energy levels fluctuating. Quantum signature from the other side matches the known frequency for the alternate universe.”
A quick, steady percussion turned her head. She tracked the sound to Kitsom, who anxiously tapped his index finger against the side of the helm console. The dark-haired agent stared at the split image on the main viewscreen. On one side was the fiery chaos of the rift; on the other was the panicked flurry of escape pods rocketing away from Ikkuna Station.
Kitsom’s frown thinned and the creases in his brow deepened. “Where the hell are they? They should have beamed back by now.”
With a quick jab at the tactical panel, Webb opened a comm channel. “Królik to Cole. What’s your status and ETA?”
Static accompanied the whine of weapons fire over the channel. Cole’s voice pitched with stress. “Still helping the good doctor hold the control room!”
Concern darkened Webb’s expression. “Do you require assistance?”
“Negative! Are you in position?”
“Affirmative.”
“Stay there.” The screeching of disruptor blasts became deafening. “Hang on.”
The channel closed with a click. Webb and Kitsom traded grim looks. Kitsom shook his head. “What the hell are they doing? It was supposed to be two minutes and out!”
“Facts on the ground,” Webb said. “Gotta deal with what is, not what you planned.”
Kitsom pointed at the flurry of departing escape pods. “And what the hell is that? Why did we give them so much time to escape? It has to be that moron Bashir’s—”
“Enough!” Webb’s sharp rebuke silenced Kitsom. Their reciprocal angry glares persisted for a fraction of a second longer than Sarina might have expected, before Webb broke the moment with a new order. “Plot the fastest course through the rift and get ready to go. I get the feeling we’ll be cutting this one closer than usual.”
Both men continued with their tasks as if nothing odd had transpired between them, but Sarina was sure she had witnessed an accidental slip, a clue that something serious was amiss. And whatever it was, it had to do with Julian.
An alert buzzed on Webb’s console. He silenced it with a sweep of his hand. “They’re back.” He opened an internal comm channel. “Command to transporter room.”
Cole shouted over the comm, “We’re all here! Go!”
Webb pointed at the rift. “Punch it!”
The impulse engines thrummed, sending thrilling vibrations through the deck. The Królik leaped into motion, and the image of the rift swelled until its ragged edges slipped past the boundaries of the viewscreen’s oblong frame.
Emergency alerts flooded the sensor screens in front of Sarina. “The station’s exploding! Aft shields, now!”
Webb grimaced. “No shields inside the rift! We’ll have to outrun it!”
Kitsom pointed at the horrifying image on the screen. “The rift’s collapsing!”
Sarina pointed out the obvious. “If the station’s gone, so’s the rift generator!”
No one had to tell Kitsom to push the engines into overdrive. He released the safety lockouts on the impulse coils and accelerated the stolen Breen scout vessel through the rift.
The leading edge of a subspace shock wave made the Królik tremble as the aft hatch slid open and Cole, Sakonna, and Bashir scrambled onto the command deck. Sarina grabbed Bashir’s arm and pulled him to her as she warned the others, “Brace for impact!”
It struck with a roar like a volcanic eruption. Darkness dropped; the viewscreen and the consoles all went black, and the musical droning of the impulse engines fell silent.
Violent invisible forces—momentum, deceleration, wild shifts in direction—hurled Sarina through the dark. She stretched out her arms in front of her head and face and tried to prevent her body from tensing with anticipation. Stay loose, stay limber. Be ready to—
&nb
sp; Her back slammed against a bulkhead or a console, and something hard took a bite out of the back of her head. Purple spots swam in her vision as she was launched again into the dark, tumbling and flailing blindly toward her next collision.
She bounced off something, then off of someone, before the cacophony ceased. The artificial gravity resumed and slammed her back onto the deck.
Dull greenish emergency lighting snapped on at regular intervals where the bulkheads met the overhead. Seconds later, most of the command deck’s consoles flickered back to life. The viewscreen displayed a grainy image cut by diagonal hashes of interference, showing the last remnants of the rift as it stitched itself closed and vanished from existence.
Cole pulled himself to his feet with a groan and walked with a stiff gait to the center chair. “Mister Kitsom, get a fix on our position. Everyone else, damage reports. Now.”
Kitsom recalibrated the helm, then checked the navcomp readout. “We’ve made it to the alternate univese. Our position is the same as it was in our universe, on the edge of Breen space.”
A slow nod from Cole. “Good. We’ll start the hunt from here.” He raised his voice. “Where are my damage reports?”
Webb spoke first. “Shields and weapons are good to go, but the cloak is fried.”
“Can it be fixed?”
“Not a chance. It’s a total loss.”
Cole sighed and pointed at Sakonna. “Engines?”
The Vulcan coaxed an update from her engineering panel. “Minor damage to the port warp nacelle. We can have it fixed within the hour.”
Sarina completed her own check and turned toward Cole. “All other internal systems check out. And the passive-detection system traced the subspace message Thot Tran sent through the rift after we ejected his pod. Which means we have an approximate position for the Tajny.”
“Good work, everyone. Douglas, go below with Sakonna and get that warp nacelle fixed. Webb, load the cloak-penetrating sensor protocols the Enterprise crew developed last year when they tracked the Breen to Mangala.” He lifted his arm and dramatically pointed at the stars. “Mister Kitsom, lay in a pursuit course, best possible speed.” He smiled. “The hunt is on.”
Fifteen
“Confirmed breach!” Ensign Riaow looked up from her tactical panel and beckoned the ShiKahr’s captain with a wave of her white-tufted paw. “Same coordinates as the first event! Sensors indicate a vessel came through from the other universe!”
“All sensors on those coordinates now.” Sh’Pherron left the center chair to review the data on Riaow’s console. With a gingerly touch of her fingertip behind her ear, she activated her subcutaneous transceiver. “Commander Turak to the bridge, on the double.” She sidled up to Riaow. “Show me what you’ve got. All of it.”
Riaow reconfigured her panel into a grid consisting of half a dozen correlated sensor reports. She touched her paw to the top left corner. “The event was brief, no more than a few minutes, but the energy levels were even higher than the last one. There was also a major subspace shock wave before it closed, which suggests something big exploded on the other side.”
“Okay. Did we get a clear reading on the ship?”
The Caitian called up a tactical scan from the center row of the grid. “Hull configuration suggests Breen design, but its energy signature is one we haven’t seen before, not on any Breen ship. It might be something new, or it might have been modified by someone else.”
“Or maybe the Breen make their ships differently in the other universe.” Eager to move along, sh’Pherron pointed at the full-sector target-tracking scans. “Where’s it going?”
“Bearing one-nine-nine mark twenty-six.” Riaow pulled up a subspace signal waveform. “The same general heading as a two-way subspace transmission we picked up between the rift and an unknown source in this universe, somewhere in this subsector.”
The highlighted subsector of the chart was interstellar deep space—no star systems, rogue planets, space stations, or even listening posts. Riaow’s observation seemed to confirm what sh’Pherron had suspected all along. “A cloaked ship.”
“Most likely, sir, yes.” Another warning flashed on the console. Riaow subdued it with a swat of her paw. “The new arrival just jumped to warp nine point seven.”
Thinking out loud, sh’Pherron pondered the evidence in front of her. “So, the first ship to come through the breach evades us by traveling cloaked. Then someone risks revealing the hidden ship’s position by sending it a subspace signal, to which it responds. Now another ship arrives and follows that heading at high warp.” The shen aimed a sidelong glance at Riaow. “What would you deduce from all this?”
“It would seem careless to risk sending a signal to a cloaked ship, unless something posed a threat to it.” A sideways nod at the console. “Such as someone coming after it.”
It seemed to sh’Pherron like a plausible reading of the facts. Still, she had to consider less favorable interpretations. “What if the first vessel is merely clearing the way for the second? Or the second is traveling uncloaked to serve as a decoy for the first?”
“Both are possible.” Riaow shrugged. “Either way, we need to pursue the new target.”
“Because?”
“It’s what we have. If it’s a decoy, capturing its crew could yield clues to the first ship’s intentions. If it’s in league with the first intruder, catching it will put us closer to both. And if it’s tracking the other ship, then it might be of use—by flushing out our quarry for us.”
The tactical officer’s arguments rang true to sh’Pherron. “Well said. Carry on.”
The starboard aft turbolift doors opened, and Turak emerged and moved to sh’Pherron’s side. “Situation, sir?”
“We have a new interloper, one whose identity and objectives are unknown. Review the sensor data with Riaow, then design a pursuit-and-attack plan with Zareth.”
The Vulcan man nodded. “When do you want to begin the assault?”
“I’m not sure yet that I do. I just want a plan ready to go.”
Her answer put a confused look on Turak’s face. “I do not understand.”
“We don’t know yet whether we’re dealing with friend or foe. Until we do, track the ship from maximum sensor range. Observe and report any changes in its heading or behavior to me.”
“Understood, Captain.” Turak cocked an eyebrow. “And if they prove to be a foe?”
Sh’Pherron hoped that scenario wouldn’t come to pass. She turned a hard and unforgiving stare toward her first officer. “Then we’ll make sure they don’t live to regret their mistake.”
* * *
Thot Trom hunched over the star chart displayed on the command deck’s aft situation table. New details popped into view every few moments as data from the Tajny’s sensors refreshed in real time. Watching the tactical reality unfold this way helped Trom see patterns of activity more clearly, which in turn aided him in developing responses.
It was, in some respects, a lot like improvising a dance to a tune one had never heard before: feeling the tempo and learning to expect when the changes would likely come. And though Trom was not one to boast, in his youth he had been quite the dancer.
A turbolift arrived. Crin stepped through its parting doors and turned on his heel to join Trom at the situation table. “Has something changed?”
“Everything.” Trom pointed at the tactical map. “Contingency usta’s been enacted.”
The first officer stared at the tabletop star chart. “Usta hasn’t been tested yet.”
“Then we’ll be breaking new ground.” Trom tapped the hexagon of an adjacent subsector on the chart. “Ikkuna Station’s gone, and whoever fragged it is coming after us.”
Crin leaned closer to the tabletop. “A scout ship? That’s the best they could do?”
“Don’t get overconfident. It’s one of ours, but its energy profile has changed. Which suggests that someone captured it and modified it somehow.” Trom touched both hands to the interactiv
e display and widened the scope of the star chart by setting his fingertips at opposite corners and pulling them together, toward the center. “Fortunately, it’s traveling without its cloak, so we have time to lie low while we rethink our exit strategy.” He tapped on the B’hava’el system. “This is our real problem.”
“Bajor?” Crin looked up. “What’s our interest in them?”
“In the Bajorans? Nothing. But their wormhole is our only remaining path home.” Trom called up a classified report on the tabletop and rotated it for Crin to peruse. “According to secret Starfleet reports, there have been several crossings between our universe and this one over the past ten years—all of them utilizing the wormhole to one degree or another.” He highlighted a topological wire frame of the Bajoran wormhole’s interior. “That artificial structure is more than just a passageway between distant points in the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants—it’s potentially a gateway to a nearly unlimited number of parallel universes.”
Crin set his hands on the table’s edges and leaned forward, mirroring Trom. “Is the large number of Commonwealth ships lingering around the Bajor sector any reason for alarm?”
“At the very least, it’s cause for caution.” Trom selected the hexagon containing the Bajor system. “I’m more concerned about the unpredictable nature of the nonlinear-time entities who inhabit the wormhole. During the Dominion’s war against the Federation and its allies, the wormhole entities wiped out a fleet of Jem’Hadar reinforcements.”
A slow grim nod from Crin. “So they might not be amenable to granting us passage.”
“A distinct possibility.”
Crin magnified the subsectors directly adjacent to the wormhole. “There’s another wrinkle to consider. If we succeed in using the wormhole to return to our own universe, we’ll emerge on the doorstep of Starfleet’s new Deep Space Nine starbase. Even if we arrive cloaked, they’ll see the wormhole when it opens, and they’ll start scanning for us. They’d be certain to intercept us.”
“I admit it’s a less than ideal plan. But for now, it’s all we have. Put Solt and his engineers on it. See if they can cook up a better alternative.”