Warship Deathstrike
Pergamum Nebula
Baladon did not say that he had a realistic hope—that in exchange for Enterprise, the Klingons would give him one of the Federation worlds they had conquered. There, he’d set up his own Lurian society, free from the ruling Gheljiar and their dynasty of dunces. Humans favored luxurious planets for their homes; why they set off to study the reeking armpits of the galaxy was beyond him. Baladon would be happy to set up court and allow the privateers to come to him for jobs.
That is, if Klingons made deals.
“Are we still following Enterprise’s course?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jeld replied. “But they go fast.”
Baladon nodded. He had little worry about losing his prey. Tracking a vessel through a nebula was one of the few Lurian flight-deck talents, honed by operations in the Ionite. The nebula would slow Enterprise down again eventually.
At the tactical station, Vauss tentatively raised a finger. “Something’s out there.”
“Aha!” Baladon clapped his hands and sprang from his chair. “Sooner than I expected. They’ve been forced to stop. Perhaps we did damage after all.” He stepped to the bloody comm station and activated the shipwide address system. “This is Baladon, my legion. Even fools can find redemption, it seems, when history takes a hand.”
Jeld quietly grumbled, “They have no idea what you mean.”
“Consider that last attempt merely a drill,” Baladon continued. “Reassemble at the assault pods, weapons at the ready. On boarding Enterprise, you will deal with any Starfleet personnel with extreme malice.” He laughed. “They aren’t conquerors by reputation, so it should be—”
At once, a deafening boom. Deathstrike rocked, knocking Baladon from his feet and several of his officers away from their stations. Alarms screeched.
“They shot at us!” Vauss yelled over the din.
“Nonsense,” Baladon said, using a console for support as he got to his knees. “Remember where we are! Enterprise is far ahead. You have driven us into a wave of dense material, or possibly a—”
Another clamor, another impact put him flat on his back. Baladon rolled over on the deck, seething with fury. This time, before he could say anything, a third blast struck.
Deathstrike shuddered, the sound of its impulse engine dying.
“Now we’ve stopped,” Jeld called out. “Still think they’re far ahead?”
Baladon gritted his teeth and looked at the forward viewport. Dark gases—maybe a moving silhouette? He stood. “Charge weapons. Find them!”
Vauss, huddled behind his control station, rose and tried to get his bearings. “Can’t see them.”
Baladon bolted toward the tactical station. He would sort this out himself. As he reached it, a clang reverberated through the overhead.
What in—?
One clank after another, and a little jolt to Deathstrike each time. Baladon was still piecing together what was happening when Vauss grabbed his arm. “Brother, look!”
Outside the forward viewport, a stubby cylinder hurtled toward Deathstrike’s bow, propelled by attitude-control jets on its rounded surface. It looked for a moment as if the object would strike the viewport, but it instead slammed, flat-end first, into the hull a few meters to the right. It was the loudest clang they’d yet heard.
Baladon instantly realized what would come next. “They’re cutting us open!” Several points on the bulkhead inside the impact location glowed as laser torches began cutting through. Deathstrike’s assault pods operated in a similar manner, but with a difference: there were Lurians piloting the small vehicles. These things didn’t seem to be carrying anyone—and that made them weapons. “They’re going to decompress the bridge!”
Chaos ruled, as Lurians rushed willy-nilly to find environment suits that nobody had thought to stock the room with. Time ran out quickly. The three-meter-diameter circle of metal that had been part of the bulkhead began to give way. Jeld shouted a warning—and everyone reached for whatever handhold they could find.
The panel fell in and slammed to the deck. Through the smoke from the cut, Baladon saw not the open space of the nebula, but another door, a few meters beyond. A moment later, that view vanished as a second, nearer door, flush to the outer hull of the ship, slammed shut.
They’re installing their own airlocks? That suggested to Baladon that the boarders might intend to keep Deathstrike’s occupants alive—which would track with Starfleet’s softhearted practices. But who knew they even had such capabilities?
Bipedal figures were now coming into view outside, carried along on jets of their own. Baladon cursed. His crew had been searching for spacesuits when they should have been looking for weapons.
“Repel boarders!” the pirate yelled for the first time in his life. Elsewhere on Deathstrike, something was already happening. Extremely high-pitched screeches intermingled with lower-pitched sounds of certain violence. Baladon, who always carried a sidearm for disciplinary purposes, raised his disruptor and trained it on the new doorway—
—not anticipating the powerful sonic wave that erupted from a device on the impromptu airlock doors facing them. The shriek knocked Baladon and others off their feet, even as the airlock doors cycled open again.
What passed that new threshold was unlike anything Baladon had ever seen—not in battle, nor in any records of warfare. A titan two and a half meters tall entered, completely protected in armor made from some kind of reddish composite. The outfit was anything but sleek, with multiple protrusions, including a large jetpack, equipment cases of various sizes, and gear asymmetrically stowed. Some parts of it looked newer than others; much of the plating was pocked and dented, as if by combat. The armor bristled with offensive systems: built-in energy weapons, what looked like grenades, and even some kind of white staff—which the faceless figure drew and thrust against the deck. An electric shock went through the floor, causing bridge crewmembers—but not the invader—to jump.
Baladon and a couple of others recovered and tried to fire on the attacker, but their shots glanced off something, not even making contact with the armor.
Energy shielding too? Baladon frowned. He had no time to strategize, as several more warriors poured through the doorways aft of the bridge. Unlike the first intruder, their gear seemed less battle damaged—but they bore just as many weapons.
The ensuing melee was as brief as it was surprising to Baladon, who knew fighting to be the one thing, besides eating, that every member of his crew had some talent at. He had all he could handle himself. As more intruders cycled through the new bridge airlock, the mighty Lurian flailed wildly at the warrior who had entered first. Baladon’s knuckles slammed against the armor, a painful act evoking no reaction. Nor did the next blow, or the next one, bloodying his hands but doing nothing else. Then in a movement faster than the Lurian could see, the intruder’s hand lanced forward, seizing Baladon’s beefy neck in a powerful grip. The warrior’s arm rose, lifting the hefty Baladon centimeters off the deck.
The fight was over—for everyone. More armored characters streamed onto the bridge. As Baladon struggled helplessly, some carried off his companions; his crewmates seemed dazed, not dead. Other new arrivals produced power tools, which they deployed to begin removing control stations from the deck. This included the console of Deathstrike’s late communications officer, whose body was unceremoniously shoved onto the floor.
“I am Kormagan,” the invader said in perfect Lurian, easily audible through the warrior’s faceplate without mechanical amplification. The figure returned Baladon to the deck and released him. “Speak if you understand me.”
Baladon coughed—and nodded. “You’re from Enterprise.”
“What’s an Enterprise?”
Baladon slouched, only able to watch as the boarders did to his ship what he had done to so many others in his career.
Too late, he realized he had just discovered who the real pirates of the Pergamum were.