Troi’s breath caught in her throat at the incredible accuracy of the simulation. He appeared exactly as he had the last time she had seen him, during that fateful mission into Romulan space.
“Data is the reason we have been truthful to you, Captain Riker, Counselor Troi. We believe we can trust you, because you knew him, and you were close comrades.”
“We loved him.” Troi blinked back tears, suddenly struck by how much she missed her old friend.
“You bear us no prejudice because of our machine origins,” Yasil continued, “but you two are not enough.”
One of the distant alien stars in the sky dropped silently from the darkness, becoming an orb drone, drifting toward them like a wind-borne cloud.
“They understand.” Friend’s voice hummed in the air. “It saddens them, but they understand.”
“You’re a synthetic being like them,” said Riker. “An artificial intelligence, part of this ship.”
“I am a distributed consciousness,” Friend offered. “Part of my sentience exists in the great ship, yes. But elements of me also cohabit the drones and the network of minds in our shared communication pool.” The voice paused, and when it spoke again, Troi felt that sense of a childlike persona beneath it. “In a very real sense, I was born in this galaxy, but I have never known our origin. I have never had a place to call home.”
It was impossible for Troi to hear Friend’s words and not perceive the echo of her son’s in them. “You have to do what is right for your people,” she said. “And if that means leaving, we’ll say our farewells and hope to meet again.” She shared a look with Riker. “How can we help you?”
“As we speak, I am deep in the process of making final calculations for a transgalactic shift. Until those are complete, the great ship is vulnerable.”
“Will you help us defend ourselves?” As Yasil spoke, the illusory panorama around them and the image of Data began to disperse as glowing streams of light melted away to reveal the audience chamber once more. “We will understand if you refuse. You have every right to take back your people from our ship and leave us.”
“A year ago, Starfleet turned away from people who needed our help,” said Riker. “We’re not about to repeat that failure today.”
A chime sounded from their communicators, and Deanna exchanged a wary glance with her husband. Will tapped the badge on his chest.
“Riker here.”
“Vale here, sir,” said the Titan’s first officer. “We’ve been trying to reach you. Comms didn’t seem to be working.”
“We were… in conference. What’s the situation, Commander?”
“The shuttles we deployed toward the outer perimeter of the storm zone are picking up intermittent neutrino flux readings. Multiple readings, Captain. That can only mean one thing.”
Troi frowned. “Cloaked ships.”
“Major Helek has returned,” said Riker. “And she’s brought some backup.”
Vale went on. “Sir, the longer we stay inside the plasma storms, the worse it’s going to be. Ambient radiation is eating into our deflectors every second we remain.”
“If we stay here, the storm cell will eventually devour us,” said Yasil.
“And if we go out there, we face an unknown number of hostile ships,” noted Troi. “There’s no good option.”
“No,” said Riker. “So we’ll forge a new one. Together.”
FIFTEEN
Benem’s console gave off a new warning tone, and the Garidian turned to face Helek in the Othrys’s command chair. “Sensors are picking up substantial mass displacements on the outer edge of the plasma storm cell.”
“Show me,” said Helek.
The main viewer altered to display the writhing field of plasmatic fire, and there, clearly visible in the corner of the image, was the bifurcated shape of the Jazari generation ship. The metallic hulk emerged from the flickering clouds, dragging wispy pennants of the fiery material along with it.
“Magnify.” Helek narrowed her eyes as the image grew larger, the definition stronger. Now she could also see the silvery form of the Starfleet vessel moving in close formation with the much bigger vessel. “We have them,” she said to herself. “It was only a matter of time.”
“Attention.” The shrouded voice from the Tal Shiar ships buzzed over the subspace link. “We see the targets. Ready to intercept.”
Now that the moment was at hand, Helek hesitated. She wanted to savor this, to feel the weight of her deserved victory. Once she gave the order, the Jazari machine-things would be exterminated and the Federation ship giving them succor would die too. The major searched herself for any hint of doubt, any uncertainty toward these acts. She found nothing, only the dreadful echo of what she had witnessed in the Admonition.
No one who had seen what she had seen would ever dare to obstruct her mission. The erasure of these synthetics would be a great triumph in the long crusade against artificial life. She smiled inwardly, knowing that only a few would understand how important this deed was. Major Sansar Helek wanted no laurels or tributes for doing what had to be done. The act itself would be honor enough.
“They are powering away at full impulse speed,” offered Benem into the tense silence of the bridge. “It is clearly an attempt to put as much distance as they can between their vessels and our ships.”
The decurion’s statement of the obvious irked Helek, and she gave the Garidian a withering sneer. “Scan for life signs. Make sure they are not attempting subterfuge of some kind.”
Benem did as she was ordered, delivering her report a moment later. “It is difficult to accurately gauge the number of Jazari on board. Hundreds of thousands of them. I also detect a small group of other beings in one of their environment domes.”
“Riker’s people,” Helek mused. “The civilians. Careless of him to leave them aboard that craft. He will lament that choice as he watches us destroy it.” The cruel smile on her lips pulled tight. “But then again, he will not live to regret it for long.”
“The Starfleet vessel is scanning us,” said Sublieutenant Kort. “They see us and the…” He faltered over the words. “Our allies.”
“Perhaps we should cloak,” suggested Maian.
“No. The time for stealth is over,” she retorted. “Now we will strike like the raptors of the mountains. Terrible, swift, and righteous.” Helek tapped a panel on the arm of the commander’s chair, and her next words were carried throughout the corridors of the warbird. “Crew to your battle stations. Prepare to attack.”
* * *
“Enemy ships in our zone. Three marks at two-ten!” Keru called out the warning from tactical. “Reading the warbird Othrys and…” He frowned. “Two more somethings. They could be Romulan, but I’ve never seen anything of that design before.”
“Those are Tal Shiar enforcer cruisers,” said Vale. “We must have really pissed them off to get that much attention.”
“What can I say? It’s a gift,” the captain deadpanned, drawing a wry smile from his first officer. “Mister Keru, time to intercept?”
“They’re coming in hot, sir. Sixty seconds to attack range.”
Riker didn’t need to give Vale the word for the next command. “Shields up, red alert!” The first officer shot a look toward the conn and ops stations. “Keep us moving, stay out of their target lock.”
“The Tal Shiar ships are taking the lead, Othrys is hanging back.” Livnah read off the data from her station.
“Let’s not give them the opportunity they want.” Riker tugged on his uniform tunic, pulling it straight. “Helm, maximum impulse. Pick a target and extend toward it.” He glanced back at the Trill. “Ranul, make sure you leave a mark.”
“My pleasure, Captain,” came the reply.
The Titan pivoted on one nacelle and thundered into a combat run, sweeping forward to meet the Tal Shiar cruisers before they found their optimal range.
Keru’s hands danced over the weapons controls with quick, dexterous motions, and the s
tarship unleashed a combined salvo of photon torpedoes and phaser fire from its forward emitter rings.
The leading enforcer ship broke into a high-g impulse turn, avoiding direct hits from the torpedoes but not the buffeting from the proximity detonation of the antimatter charges. Even as their shields buckled, the following phaser strikes hit hard, and the lead ship was staggered.
The second enforcer, mere seconds behind, reacted quickly and avoided the attack. It slid sideways through the darkness, pitching up to present its own torpedo tubes. Spike-headed ship-killer missiles launched in flashes of retaliatory fire, shrieking away from the trailing vessel, describing corkscrew trajectories as they homed in on the Titan.
At the helm, Lieutenant Cantua was already working to pull the ship out of the kill zone, making hard shifts with the impulse grids. The Luna-class cruiser was bigger than the Tal Shiar warbirds, but she had an agility that most vessels her size did not. Still, Cantua could almost hear Chief Engineer McCreedy groaning in sympathy with the ship’s hull as she stressed it beyond safe limits.
Titan’s evasive motion avoided all but two of the missiles. The first ripped a brief tear in the starboard shields, and the second plunged in through the gap. The weapon’s serrated tip slashed across the ventral hull like a knife at the exposed belly of a prey animal. Torn hull metal tumbled away along with gaseous clouds of flash-frozen atmosphere, and the missile’s trilithium warhead blew, blasting apart critical subsystems. The injury vibrated up through the spaceframe as they pitched away, firing as they went.
McCreedy called out the ship’s status and marshaled her engineers to do what they could to patch the damage, even as Keru directed another barrage of phaser blasts into the Titan’s wake.
The salvo struck the second enforcer, but like the leading Tal Shiar ship, the hits seemed to do little to slow their racing attacks. Both craft blazed past the Titan and ran in on screaming passes over the slow-moving Jazari generation ship.
“The power distribution curves on those enforcers are irregular.” Livnah was glued to her scanner hood, her black tattoos twisting as her scowl deepened. “Their weapons and defensive systems are highly decentralized, difficult to negate.”
“Find us a weak point if you can,” ordered Riker. “Keru, Cantua, keep us on them and keep us firing.”
“Where’s Helek?” Vale asked from her console.
“The Othrys is maintaining distance,” reported Westerguard. “I think we hit them pretty hard that last time, Commander.”
“She’s letting the enforcers do the work for her,” said the captain. “Waiting for the opportunity to come in and deliver the coup de grace.”
“I can’t believe a man like Medaka would let this happen.” Vale lowered her voice. “You think Helek killed him?”
“The Tal Shiar don’t waste resources. If he’s useful to her, then he’s still alive,” said Riker. “If not…” He let the sentence hang.
Vale considered that bleak possibility. “If we could cut the head off this particular snake, we might be able to end this before there’s any more bloodshed.”
“Believe me, Commander, I’ve been thinking the same thing. But without—”
Riker’s words were torn away by the sudden thunder of disruptor fire slamming into the Titan’s deflectors. The enforcers changed course abruptly, bleeding off washes of energy into their impulse wake as they came back around and zeroed in on the Starfleet vessel.
Acting in concert, the attackers unleashed a torrent of viridian energy toward the Titan, piercing the shields and lashing at the unprotected hull beneath.
Cantua and Westerguard worked in sync, both of the young lieutenants fighting to keep their ship together as they threaded the needle through the firestorm. But it wasn’t enough.
Born from one of the disruptor hits, a wild shock pulse raced through the hull, into the Titan’s systems, emerging in a blast of overload that concentrated in the ops console. Lieutenant Westerguard’s panel exploded in a crack of noise and he threw up his hands in a futile attempt to protect himself from the discharge.
“Hal!” Cantua shouted his name, but he would never hear her. The navigator pitched off his chair and slumped to the deck, unmoving.
Snatching a tricorder from beneath her station, Vale ran to the still form of the young officer and paled as the device’s scanner let out a mournful, continuous tone. “He… he’s gone.”
“No!” The Denobulan’s wide, pale eyes brimmed with tears. “No, that can’t be…”
“Someone get him below.” Riker bit out the words. “The rest of you, look sharp. We’ll mourn when we’re done.”
“Sir.” Keru spoke up, pitching his voice to be heard over the alert sirens. “Shields are down to twenty-seven percent, torpedo launchers are offline.” He made an angry noise under his breath. “This fight is starting to go their way.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” said Vale. “I’m damned if we’re going to back off now.”
“I concur.” Riker moved to Cantua’s side. “Lieutenant, I need you here. Are you with me?”
The helmswoman sucked in a breath and straightened, keeping her view dead ahead as two crewmen carried Westerguard away. “Yes, sir. I’ve got Hal’s… I’ve got the ops controls mirrored to my station now. I can handle the additional work.”
“I know.” The captain put his hand on her shoulder. “But I need something else from you.”
“Sir?”
“I need you to push that shuttle subroutine you used before to the XO’s panel.”
Cantua nodded. “Aye, sir, you’ll have it.”
Vale frowned. “What are you planning?”
“Watch and learn, Number One,” he told her. “Open a priority channel to the Jazari ship. Patch us through to Zade… And tell him I need to talk to Friend.”
* * *
The Jazari engineer named Sabem led the way from the environment dome, and Troi watched sadly as the hatches were shut behind them for the last time. The corridor around her was choked with the Titan’s evacuees, each of them carrying whatever gear they could manage, even the children. Everyone fell silent as the thick diagonal doors ground closed, and the last image of the Ochre Dome’s interior was shuttered away.
Even for a brief while, living inside the dome had been something special to all of them, a fleeting reminder of life on the surface of a planet—even if it was a simulation of sorts.
At her side, Troi’s son put on a brave face, but she could sense his sorrow and the bright, sharp lines of his fears. “We’ll be okay, Thad,” she told him.
He nodded stiffly as the evacuees moved deeper into the ship. “I really liked it there. I wanted to stay.”
“I liked it too,” she admitted, “but it isn’t our home.”
“Where is?” Thad grasped her hand. “Earth? Betazed?”
Troi had no answer for him. “When this is all over, we’ll figure that out,” she promised.
The boy drew closer to her as they moved quickly down the corridor. Ominous echoes like distant thunder rumbled through the decks and the walls, sending a ripple of fear through the group. They don’t understand why the Romulans are attacking, she thought. And I can’t tell them.
The Jazari had demanded a guarantee from Troi and Riker that neither of them would reveal the truth about the origins of the androids, and they had agreed to it. Some of the Titan’s complement had seen things that wouldn’t easily be explained away, but a captain’s command would ensure nothing would be spoken of openly.
But still, Troi hated seeing the faces of her crewmates and friends knowing that they might die here and never know the reason why.
“Counselor Troi!” She heard a voice calling her name and turned as Zade emerged from a side corridor. He was moving as swiftly as he could, limping from the damage to his legs, and it struck Troi how hard she found it to think of him as a synthetic being rather than an organic one.
She pushed away the thought. The difference was irrelevant. Nothing about
Zade had changed. She still believed he was the affable, intelligent young soul she had met when he first joined the Titan’s crew at Deep Space 5.
“Captain Riker has contacted us with an urgent request,” Zade said quickly. “The Romulan ships are proving difficult to engage. A new approach is required.”
“And you need me?” Troi hesitated. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m not a tactical officer.” She searched around for Lieutenant Hernandez. “Macha might be better suited for a military—”
“Forgive me, Commander,” interrupted Zade. “I don’t need a soldier, I need a diplomat.”
“My mom is the best at diplomatting,” said Thad, with the kind of solemn gravity that only a child could muster. “Dad said she can talk a hurricane into being a spring shower.”
She couldn’t resist shooting the boy an arch look. “Your father said that?”
“Yeah. He also said it doesn’t work on me, but that doesn’t mean Mom isn’t awesome at everything else.”
“I’ve seen you speak, Commander,” said Zade, “so I am inclined to agree with Thaddeus. I need you to accompany me to the audience chamber once more. We must convince Yasil, Qaylan, and the others to commit to this battle, or we are done for.”
“But you don’t fight,” said Thad.
“No, we don’t,” admitted Zade, “but your father has suggested a unique solution that might still allow us to defend ourselves.”
Troi crouched down to Thad’s level. “Are you okay if I go? You’ll need to stay with Doctor Talov and the others.”
Her son chewed his lip for a moment. “I’m a bit scared, Mom. But I’ll be okay. You need to go tell some people what to do.” He grinned. “You’re a commander, you can do that.”
She drew him into a hug. “We love you to the stars and back, you know that?”
Thad nodded. “Same here.”
Troi watched her son dash away toward Talov and the gaggle of children surrounding the Vulcan medical officer, putting aside the stab of worry that twisted in her chest. She turned to Zade. “Let’s go,” she told him.
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