More antimatter near misses and disruptor direct hits pounded the shields. “Say again, Lieutenant, I cannot hear,” Nicola shouted. His earpiece pressed to his ear, the communications officer looked fraught to Pike. “That was the tropical-site team, Captain. I was only getting a word here and there—now I can’t get them at all.”
“You can’t get them, I can’t get to them.” He had barely finished the sentence when it dawned on Pike: that might be the whole point. “Enough of this. Do we have any of the landing parties in line of sight?” Pike looked over to the port side, and Galadjian’s station. “Doctor, what’s the status on our people?”
“I am online with the transporter rooms,” the chief engineer replied. He looked flustered, overwhelmed by input. “I—I don’t believe they can get a fix.”
“I don’t want beliefs. I need certainty.”
Galadjian pressed a control and spoke. “Lieutenant Pitcairn, you have the coordinates. Can you get a fix on anyone?”
“Not through a planet, Doctor.”
Pike thought Pitcairn hit the last word a little hard, but he understood the frustration belowdecks. He felt it too. “Raden, try to put us in range of the closest camp.”
“That’d be Spock,” Raden said, feeling Enterprise quake from another barrage. “I’d be happy to, if these characters would let us!”
Susquatane
Polar Expedition Site
The communication from Kormagan’s transport was piped directly into her headgear. “Carriers report engagement,” one of her warriors declared. “Target Enterprise has put up shields and is returning fire.”
“Did they launch shuttles before they raised shields?”
“No, and they can’t do it now. The carriers have made sure of that.”
That was the plan: bottle up Enterprise, preventing it from recovering its people. The fact that she could hear the call from her junior at all meant something else. While several of her combat modules aloft had been jamming the Starfleet camps on the nightside, Enterprise hadn’t done anything to retard her forces’ ability to communicate with her ships on the dayside. The nebula blocked most subspace messages of longer distance; at least so far, her ability to communicate in the operational theater was unhindered.
The clingtrap cocoons had been successful in immobilizing the three Starfleet people; in hundreds of exfiltration operations, she had never known a bipedal life-form to escape one yet. Her specialist went from one captive to another, running quick scans on the captives. He read the results. “Subtype human, first encountered by Wave Five-One-Nine. Subtype Vulcan, Wave Four-Eight-Oh. Andorian, Wave Five-Three-Nine.” He laughed. “One of yours, Chief!”
“All exfils are alike to me,” Kormagan said. “Do they need to breathe?”
“I think so.”
“Stick ’em and punch ’em.”
Dutifully, the specialist and two of his comrades knelt over the prisoners, injecting sedatives through the clingtrap envelopes. Immediately afterward, they cut larger holes in the bags for breathing tubes. “These three won’t need special equipment on the ship.”
Kormagan wasn’t surprised, given that the three were clad only in their all-white thermal uniforms. Baladon had suggested Starfleet was some kind of multispecies militia, ranging in parts of the universe where existence was easier.
“Four troop modules is a lot to extract three people,” the specialist said.
“ ‘No second chances means nothing left to chance,’ ” Kormagan said, repeating something her mentor used to say. “Enough delay. Back to the troop module.”
Six of her warriors went into action as bearers, carting the captives through the snow. Any one of them would have been able to handle the weight alone, of course; the servomechanisms inside their armor multiplied the strength of wearers manyfold. But the cargo was too precious to damage—at least for now.
The exfils safely loaded, Kormagan took a call from another troop module. It was Sperrin, who had been coordinating the mission from aloft. “All opmasters have reported back. Quarry obtained. Repeat, quarry obtained.”
“Good. Tell everybody to raise ship and await my command.” Kormagan had no expectation of taking Enterprise—not this time—so a little trail covering was in order. She toggled a control to talk to someone else. “Aloga-Five, did you plant the cleaner at the camp?”
From the troop module parked farther south, a deep voice responded, “That’s affirm, Wavemaster.” It was Baladon. “Looks like I finally got my shot at Enterprise.”
The elation in his voice amused Kormagan. Perhaps there were second chances—at least for Lurians. “Lift off.”
15
* * *
U.S.S. Enterprise
Over Susquatane’s Dayside
“I’ve had enough of this game,” Pike said. “Time for a new move.”
The engagement had started less than ten minutes earlier—and yet Enterprise had actually lost ground, thanks to the efforts of its attackers. The fact that those attacks were more harassment than attempts at destruction had made him reluctant to unload on the stalkers with his most powerful weapons; as unlikely as it seemed, there might still be a conversation to be had with such people.
That left a theory he’d been developing since seeing the docking ports on all five horizontal faces of the warships. “I don’t think those things are designed to land. Concur, Number One?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“We’re going down. Raden, take us into the stratosphere. We’re going to the nightside that way.”
Raden’s eyes bulged. “But those mushroom clouds we saw down there—”
“Came from something else. And it can’t be any rockier than flying through the Acheron Formation.”
Raden adjusted course and took Enterprise downward. As the first licks of atmosphere became bites, the starship juddered. Enterprise wasn’t designed to land, either, apart from its saucer section—and that was only after separation from the stardrive section in the gravest of emergencies. But that capability meant that she could handle the descent.
The starship’s pursuers did not follow—but neither did they depart, and they began firing their weapons into Enterprise’s path. Pike’s abrupt move seemed to have thwarted their targeting, however, and now, rather than barring his way, the blasts were in his wake.
“Approaching the terminator into night,” Amin said.
“Take us up.” Pike tensed. The act had bought them moments, yes, and thousands of kilometers. But he couldn’t risk any more ordnance being directed downward. He hoped he had done enough. Outside, the nebula-bounded sky reappeared above, with a growing patch of bowl-shaped darkness below.
“Bogeys adjusting and gaining on us,” Nhan said.
That’ll have to be enough, Pike thought. “Shields down. Doctor, do you have a fix on Spock’s party?”
“It’s difficult,” Galadjian said, nearly hypnotized by his displays. “We are looking for their communicators to get a fix on them. But . . . I do not trust the readings. There is jamming.”
Una looked to Pike, her demeanor unable to hide that she, too, was growing alarmed. “You don’t need to send them a message,” she said. “At this distance, the sensors should be able to spot the transporter lock confirmation circuits in their communicators. The antenna grid would work even if it’s powered off.”
“I . . . know that.” A blast struck somewhere behind the now-vulnerable Enterprise, giving the bridge a big jolt. Galadjian wiped sweat from his brow. “But there is such distortion, still. I do not trust what I see.”
Another blast. “I’m running with shields down, Doctor,” Pike said.
Galadjian began scrolling through screens again. “Perhaps if I do the math again. Something is the matter. The readings—”
“Doctor!”
“—the readings are unclear. I would like more time to—”
Pike hit an armrest control. “Transporter room one! Beam aboard the team at—”
Dietrich s
houted, “Ground detonation, nuclear, two thousand kilometers ahead!”
Pike’s eyes locked on the flash on the horizon. No! He clapped his hands on the armrest control. “Pitcairn, the polar camp!”
He couldn’t hear the response, as overlapping shouts came from Nhan and Dietrich. “Another detonation, fifty-five south latitude, thirty east—”
“Detonation, Camp Four!”
“Detonation, equatorial—”
“Camp Two!”
Pike grew hoarse. “Pitcairn!” No response but the alert klaxon, still going. He looked at Galadjian. “Did you get anyone out?”
“I have no word from the transporter rooms.”
“The status is on the interface in front of you.” When Galadjian froze, Pike leapt up. “Dammit, man, I have people down there!” He caught a chilling glimpse of Una, her face white, as he rushed over. Galadjian withdrew from the terminal. “This isn’t even the right menu,” Pike said, astonished.
“Our attackers are withdrawing,” Nhan said. The captain barely heard her.
“Pitcairn to bridge,” came a voice from the console.
Pike didn’t bother to identify himself. “Did you get anyone?”
“Negative, Captain. Our targeting sequence reset when the X-ray pulse hit.”
He slumped over the console. “And now?”
“I’m sorry, Captain.”
Pike’s face fell. He lingered for several moments before closing the channel and turning his back to his crew.
“I . . . I am sorry,” Galadjian said, quivering. “We haven’t transported many people this trip—and I was rarely at station then. I was trying to make sense of the data. I thought I knew where to look . . .” He sat back at his station—and saw the interface Pike had pulled up. “Oh.”
Pike gawked at his superstar for a moment—and shook his head. “The attackers fired them?”
“No, Captain,” Dietrich said. “They were ground based—or could have been dropped by probes, like the first ones we saw.”
“There’s no one in the area above the nightside,” Nhan said. She looked impatient. “I’m tracking our attackers. They’re making for the nebular cloud, different headings.”
“Get after these guys,” Pike said, before checking himself. “No, wait. Launch probes of our own. Have them lock on the bogeys and tail them. We’ve got to check on our camps.”
“Yes, Captain.”
In silence, he walked to the bridge support station, pausing at one point to touch the back of a chair for support. Arriving beside Una, he spoke quietly to her, even as he kept his eyes averted. “How many?”
Una looked at the duty roster. “One member had cycled up on a shift change. Another had obtained a sample and returned.”
“How. Many.”
“Thirty.”
“That’s . . .”
“Yes.” Una looked down.
Pike wandered back to his chair in a daze. He fell into it, as if struck by an unseen blow.
They’re all gone.
Across the bridge, Avedis Galadjian stood, straightened his tunic, and walked to the turbolift. He had not been dismissed. At the door, he listened for an objection—but none was heard.
Troop Module Aloga-One
Departing Susquatane
The nebular clouds billowed thick, but Aloga-One had no trouble finding its parent vessel. Carrier Aloga and its four companion capital ships—battleships, when they were not functioning as carriers—had been designed to navigate such places.
They had also been built for two other purposes. For the war, of course; that everlasting conflict required starships that were versatile, able to be reshaped to meet the particular threats posed by the Great Enemy. And they had been designed for one other purpose: the type of mission Kormagan had just flawlessly executed.
Recruiting.
There was nothing like a good, clean takedown when executed by a crack organization. But she already knew the armored warriors on her team were the best, for a simple reason: they were still alive. That made this part of her job especially important. The war required an endless supply of soldiers. For every battle she fought—and survived—her wave needed replenishment to go on. Her people represented too many different species; multiplication the natural way would never be enough to keep up with casualties.
Fate had sent her people to war, but it had also provided. Lurians, Batakas, humans, Gorodese—those were but a fraction of the peoples that had blundered into the cosmic trap. It was a wonder that the nebula, as hostile as it was to life, continued to attract so many curious travelers. Some “exfils” claimed to have entered the nebula to prospect, to colonize, to hide. She had a different word for entering the nebula: “volunteering.”
And when they brought their own technology, like Enterprise? That was just a bonus. Time spent thinking up new things could be better spent fighting.
Yes, Kormagan had quotas to meet before taking to battle, but she had always taken pride in that part of the work. The Enemy punched holes in whatever warriors they found. Someday soon, the forces Kormagan had just plucked from Susquatane would be all that stood between her and that fate. A bad warrior might die. A bad recruiter was already dead.
Through her armor, she felt the deck quake. “Docking completed,” chirped the automated message in her headgear. Aloga-One was once again part of Carrier Aloga, her home for decades and one of the mobile centers of civilization for a people who lived for one thing: to reclaim that which had been taken from her people so long ago.
The people of Enterprise belonged to Starfleet no more. Like her, they were something better, something vital, something necessary.
For as long as they lasted.
16
* * *
U.S.S. Enterprise
Orbiting Susquatane
For those aboard a starship, the turn of the new year was a strange thing. Alongside stardates, the calendar year had continued to be used as a marker for many things having nothing to do with the length of the planet Earth’s revolutions around its sun. Academic periods. Tours of duty. The occasional birthday. But divorced from seasons, there was little to differentiate one time of year aboard a starship from another.
Wherever he had lived, Pike had nonetheless seen New Year’s Day as a psychological marker worth celebrating. The official date passing during his science team’s deployment, he had postponed the ship’s party until everyone’s return. The party had never happened. Instead, he belatedly rang in 2257 with funeral bells. It was one of several services he had officiated, ceremonies delayed while his crew attended to more urgent matters.
Making certain, first of all, that the thirty indeed had fallen. Of that, there had been little doubt. Susquatane was a vast planet, already healing itself—but the blast sites at the former camps would stand as memorials for years to come.
The second matter, answering how the camps had been targeted in the first place, took longer to resolve. Most of the science team had been annihilated, leaving Ensign Dietrich the senior officer of a near-empty department. Pike had appointed Number One to step in and try to reconstitute the unit with whatever skilled hands she could find. Together, they had pored over gigaquads of sensor data, not just from Enterprise’s sojourn at Susquatane, but also its earlier survey visit, and everything before and after. Someone had known they were at the planet, and had seen the camps.
It had taken a week before a shadow was spotted on a few milliseconds of imagery—material recorded not by Enterprise, but by the explorers at the equatorial region. An early attempt to telescopically record the habits of a nocturnal avian on a far ridge had picked up the overflight of a probe identical to the one Dietrich had seen before the third bomb fell on the dayside. Pike suspected that was both how the attackers knew what to strike, and where.
Just not why—and he still had no idea who they were. It was glaringly obvious that the five attacking starships were not alone in their actions; nonetheless, for operational purposes Enterprise’s crew h
ad named the assailant group the Susquatane Five, “Essfive” for short. Finding Essfive was the third mission before them, and he could not imagine it would end well. Enterprise’s probes had been able to transmit clearly only until the attackers they were following reached the nebular clouds surrounding Susquatane. Enterprise then received partial signals for a day, and nothing thereafter. In the Pergamum, there was no way of knowing whether the probes had lost their targets, been destroyed, or were simply wandering around aimlessly.
That had left Nhan with the barest of clues regarding where to start looking—quite a contrast to the wealth of data Enterprise had recorded about the bogeys. The shields and hulls of the Essfive starships were quite strong, hardly unexpected for vessels that navigated the nebula; as a result, sensors had not been able to peer through to take life-signs readings. But enough physical features on the vessels had been examined that Nhan was almost ready to say that the hostiles were not Klingons. The technological differences observed in the ships were just too great.
What she could not say, of course, was whether Essfive was in alliance with or in the employ of the Empire. That would be another matter.
Whatever the answer was, Pike knew the Federation would definitely need to know about the attack—and the attackers. That made his course clear.
They would leave Susquatane today, following Vector One into the soup for as far as that long-cold trail would last. Then, in the very likely case that they found nothing, they would exit the nebula, informing Starfleet.
And Pike would inform them of something else: his resignation.
He could see no other path for himself—not when so many had been lost. Rigel VII had devastated him. It was barely a scratch. Three had died there. This was thirty. He had been fooling himself to think that he had the talent for the job—and he certainly didn’t have the stomach for failing at it. He wouldn’t tell anyone. Not Boyce, not Una. No one would change his mind, this time.
The Enterprise War Page 8