SIXTEEN

Stardate 9000.9 (Late 2289)

U.S.S. Excelsior

“We’ve mopped up down here about as much as we’re able to,” Commander Sulu said, wiping soot from his face. “But Commander Cutler and the science teams will continue sifting through the ashes for forensic evidence. Have your scans shown any further transporter traces?”

Lieutenant Commander Rand shook her head, staring at the forward viewscreen on Excelsior’s bridge. “None, Commander. We thought we caught a faint glimmer of one less than an hour ago, but it was so scattered and diffuse that it could have just been random ionization in the upper atmosphere.”

Sulu frowned. “In the atmosphere? Not on the surface?”

“Yes, sir,” Rand said, nodding.

Sulu turned to speak loudly to a nearby group of Klingons. Rand couldn’t see their faces, only parts of their heavily armored leather garb. “We may be safe in assuming we’re up against a cloaked ship in orbit, rather than just attackers on the surface,” she heard him say.

“Have you found any evidence of this?” one of the Klingons said.

“Nothing definitive,” said Sulu. “But it might be wise to tell your ships to raise their shields just the same.”

Rand didn’t need to wait for Sulu to give her the same command. She leaned forward in the captain’s chair, tension gripping her. “Raise shields!” she said to Lieutenant Heather Keith, the helmsman on duty.

“Aye, sir,” Keith responded smartly as she pressed a sequence of buttons on the console in front of her.

“Commander, a ship has just decloaked between us and the Klingons,” Lieutenant Valtane shouted from his science station. “They’re opening fire!”

“On-screen!” Rand barked.

Sulu’s surprised face was replaced by a view of the space immediately surrounding Excelsior, as well as the five other ships that now shared it with her. Until moments ago, Kor’s ship, the I.K.S. Klothos, had been the closest to them, then Ambassador Kamarag’s diplomatic ship, the I.K.S. Mev’Luh. But now, a smaller ship had maneuvered between Excelsior and the contingent of Klingon vessels.

In the instant or so before the interloper fired what was apparently its second salvo, Rand tried and failed to identify the hostile ship’s configuration. It had a scavenged appearance, as though it had been assembled from several vessels of disparate design. Nevertheless, it looked quick and dangerous.

“Come about!” she ordered, immediately understanding that she had but one option. “Target the attacking ship. Full phasers.”

Even as Keith and the other bridge personnel scrambled to obey her commands, she saw three—no, five—plasma flares shoot out of the small ship in rapid succession. Two of them ripped into the aft end of the Klothos, which appeared to have been turning toward its attacker.

To Rand’s horror, the other three blasts hit the Mev’Luh, which was already burning in one spot almost directly amidships, apparently as a result of the attacking ship’s opening salvo. More explosions raged along the diplomatic vessel’s hull, the escaping atmosphere igniting, then quickly extinguishing and forming clouds of fine ice crystals in the cold vacuum of space.

“Firing,” Schulman called out from tactical.

Rand saw two sapphire-blue phaser blasts lance out toward the small raider, which had already begun rolling out of the way at a near-ninety-degree angle, barely evading the beams. Shit, they’re fast, she thought.

On the viewer, the other two Klingon battle cruisers—Kang’s I.K.S. QaD and Koloth’s I.K.S. Gal’tagh—were both coming about, their weapons tubes glowing menacingly as they launched photon torpedoes toward the swiftly careening enemy ship. Unfortunately, their weapons proved no better at striking their target than Excelsior’s phasers had been.

The small ship rolled again, turning tightly so that it was headed directly toward the Gal’tagh, from which it couldn’t have been more than a few dozen meters distant.

As the much larger Klothos seemed to wallow helplessly, Rand could see what the little raider was trying to do. “They’re cutting toward Captain Koloth’s ship,” she shouted. “We have to catch them in a crossfire before they maneuver the Klingons into firing on each other.”

“Locking phasers,” Schulman said.

“Fire,” Rand ordered.

But even as four phaser blasts from Excelsior arced toward the aggressor, the smaller ship sent what appeared to be a wide-scattered salvo from some sort of plasma weapon toward both the QaD and the Gal’tagh.

Two of the blasts from Excelsior caught the aggressor ship on her port side, resulting in an explosion on the aft section of its hull; Rand hoped she’d scored a hit on the raider’s propulsion system.

Unfortunately, in trying to evade the plasma charges, the Gal’tagh flew directly into the path of the Klothos, on an apparent collision course. Rand imagined she could almost hear the scrape of duranium on duranium as the two vessels passed with scarcely any space between them, their shields interacting to form a brilliant if momentary aurora as the hostile vessel unloaded a potent salvo of weapons fire inside its opponent’s shield perimeter. The ventral portion of the Klothos’s starboard nacelle spun away a split second later, her right disruptor cannon shattering incandescently into the void.

The QaD was not quite as lucky, having caught an entire plasma blast near its aft side, where Rand imagined its deflector-shield generators were situated.

Now they’re a sitting duck, Rand thought. Then she saw that the attacking ship was once again abruptly changing direction, trailing hull debris and molecular flames after having avoided a mutually fatal collision by the narrowest of margins.

“Target them again,” she said. “Cripple them if you can. I want to find out who we’re dealing with.”

“They’re headed directly for the Mev’Luh, Commander,” Keith said, the alarm in her voice as audible as a Red Alert klaxon.

Why would they risk doing that? Rand asked herself. After all, the diplomatic ship was already in flames.

Then something else occurred to her. She’s a diplomatic ship. A symbol of what the Korvat conference represents. And she’s right in our line of fire.

“Hold your fire!” she shouted. If the attacker thought it could manipulate Excelsior into making him a martyr and destroying the Mev’Luh in the process, they’d not planned very well at all.

“They’re still heading straight for the Mev’Luh, sir,” Valtane said with an urgency Rand rarely heard coming from the sedate junior science officer. “But they’ve powered down their weapons!”

On the screen, Rand saw the attacker moving inexorably closer and closer to the burning hulk of the Mev’Luh. Turn away, she thought, feeling helpless as she gripped the arms of the command chair. Turn away!

But the raider didn’t turn away. An instant later the viewscreen emitted a momentarily blinding brilliance as a huge explosion tore through the space where the Mev’Luh had been.

Rand saw spots before her eyes and tried to blink them away even as the viewscreen automatically damped down the excess light. “Status?”

“They put all their power into propulsion and forward shields just before impact, Commander,” Valtane said. “Even if we’d opened fire we wouldn’t have been able to avert the collision.”

If there really was a collision, Rand thought. Given the tactics she’d already seen the hostile using, she wasn’t ready to dismiss the possibility that he had simply staged another near collision before opening fire once again and activating a cloaking device. “Begin full sensor sweeps,” she said aloud as she rose to her feet. “I want to make sure the attacker didn’t get away under the cover of that explosion.”

“I’m reading debris from the Mev’Luh,” Schulman said. “But I can’t find any sign of the attacker’s vessel so far.”

“See if you can find any weapons or propulsion signatures in the debris field.” Rand knew that her second order was probably useless, but she had no choice other than to try it.

“Sensors show plasma weapons fire,” Valtane said.

Rand nodded somberly. Damn. I was really hoping the bastard would at least do us the favor of blowing himself up. “Not exactly standard issue for the Klingon military, or their diplomatic corps,” she said aloud.

Ensign Ramiro Marquez spoke up from the back of the bridge. “Commander Rand, Commander Sulu wants a status report.”

Rand sighed heavily before sinking back into the command chair. Today had not been a terribly good day. “Put him on the screen,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

When she saw the fiercely angry expressions of the three Klingon captains who were standing around Sulu, she realized just how much of an understatement “not terribly good” really was.

“You must go after them!” Kor shouted, his deep voice reverberating throughout Excelsior’s conference room.

Sulu had begun to regret the return of his hearing. Gritting his teeth, he said, “I want to, Kor, but your government might see that as another incursion into Klingon territory. And my superiors would have some very strong words to say about it as well.” Admiral Harriman had already shared a few choice ones with him on the topic via subspace radio.

“Yours is the only military vessel in this system that is undamaged and running at full capacity,” Koloth said angrily. “It is your duty to avenge this wrong.”

“My duty right now is to take care of the injured personnel—from my side and yours—from the Korvat conference,” Sulu said. “I will place Excelsior’s entire engineering department at your disposal to help your crews repair your ships. Then you can pursue the attacker without risking war.”

All three of the Klingon escort ships had been badly damaged in the fight against the small, weapons-heavy ship, while Ambassador Kamarag’s diplomatic vessel, the I.K.S. Mev’Luh, had been completely destroyed. Luckily, Excelsior’s science teams had managed to find a trail left by the attacking ship, beginning some fourteen light-minutes away from the explosion, leading away from the Korvat system on a northerly outbound trajectory. Apparently the raider’s once-working cloaking device was no longer operational, but the vessel had sped off quickly regardless—its warp capability apparently unharmed—on a heading that would take it deeper into Klingon territory.

“We do not need the assistance of cowards who are afraid to make a move without permission,” Kang said dismissively. “If you cannot be a warrior even when attacked, then you are useless, even to your own craven Federation.”

Curzon Dax, who was filling in as head of the Federation negotiating team while Ambassador Sarek remained critically injured, chose that moment to stand up. “Ylmev!” he barked, crying, “Stop!” in what could only have been tlhIngan. At least that was what Sulu hoped the young Trill had just said as all three Klingon captains turned to regard the junior ambassador with angry, smoldering eyes.

“You ask the commander to dishonor his ship and his crew by disobeying his superiors?” Dax asked with an admirable touch of bluster. “To risk war with the Empire over an attack by a third party? A war that could bring shame on all of your Houses if begun for the wrong reasons? Consider instead how much more honor you could all accrue by allowing Commander Sulu to assist you in repairing your vessels so that you may capture the attacker yourselves.”

Sulu was pleased to see that Dax’s words seemed to be getting through to the Klingons. At least they don’t look as if they want to break him in half anymore, he thought. He had considered Dax a bit reckless just before the explosion in the Korvat conference chamber, but now it seemed as though the young man was beginning to build a very narrow but almost serviceable bridge of trust.

But would that bridge bear the weight of one Trill diplomat and three Klingon captains?

“Commander Sulu has lost much as well,” Dax continued. “He has even lost the captain of his ship to whoever committed this act of wanton murder and sabotage, as well as other members of his crew. But he is not running away from this battle. Rather, he is offering to help you to win the greatest honor available to you—the chance to track down and stop the person responsible for this cowardly sabotage.”

A long period passed, perhaps an entire minute during which no one spoke.

“We will return to our ships and accept your help,” Koloth said finally, giving a sidelong glance toward the other two captains. “And we will have our vengeance.”

Despite the horrors of the day, Sulu thought he felt a small, astonished smile coming to his lips. Dax had reasoned with the Klingons.

And they had listened.