Romulan Harrier Nodokata
Seven felt her stomach revolt at the sudden loss of gravity, coupled with the disorienting tumble of the harrier as it was ejected from Dauntless’s shuttlebay. The ship rolled and yawed, turning everything outside the cockpit viewport into a muddy whorl of colors.
Eyes on the controls, Seven reminded herself. Flying by instruments alone had come easily to her during her years on Voyager, a fact for which she was now thankful. She averted her eyes from the dizzying external view and activated the master console. In a flash she had a sensor report of her position relative to Dauntless’s nacelles and secondary hull, as well as confirmations that all of the harrier’s systems were online and fully operational.
She powered up the harrier’s small transporter platform, which was located in the aft compartment, through a currently open hatchway. A quick sweep of the frequency band used by Fenris Ranger beacons instantly locked onto Ellory’s transponder chip inside Dauntless—which had not yet raised its shields but no doubt would do so in the next several seconds.
We’ll just have to be gone by then.
“Computer: Lock transporter onto the SOS beacon and energize.”
The computer responded in a man’s Romulan-accented voice, “Energizing.”
A coruscating pillar of light filled the space between the harrier’s transporter pad and the overhead, and the resonant, almost melodious sound of the transporter beam washed through the ship. Ellory materialized on the platform in a seated pose, cradling Harper’s body in a dark-blue Starfleet cadaver pouch. As the materialization effect dissipated, Ellory gave Seven a thumbs-up.
Seven raised the shields, programmed a course into the helm, and precharged the harrier’s warp coils. She was about to engage the cloaking device when the harrier lurched, disturbed by a tractor beam from Dauntless being deflected by Nodokata’s shields.
Janeway’s voice issued from the console’s main speaker. “Dauntless to Seven of Nine. Seven, I know you’re on the Romulan harrier. I don’t know what you think you’re—”
Ellory switched off the speaker with a tap on the master console as she settled into the copilot’s seat beside Seven. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Hit it.”
Seven engaged the harrier’s cloaking device. The cockpit’s interior lighting shifted to a dim ruby glow. Outside the viewport, the cosmos seemed to ripple almost imperceptibly for a fraction of a second. With the cloak at full power, Seven made a series of drastic course changes at impulse speeds to thwart Dauntless’s attempts to guess their trajectory, and then she jumped Nodokata to warp speed. “And we’re away.”
“What’s next?”
Seven recalibrated the harrier’s sensors. “We find Kohgish.”
U.S.S. Dauntless NCC-80816 — Thirty Seconds Earlier
A padd’s blank screen held Janeway captive. Seated in the command chair on Dauntless’s bridge, she struggled to find the right words for the report she would, inevitably, need to submit to Starfleet Command, explaining her perspective on the day’s events. Rationalizing her decision to refuse to cooperate with the Federation Security Agency was going to require extreme tact. And maybe a few spins on the truth. But first she had to choose where to begin.
An insistent beeping from the operations console interrupted her deliberations. The ship’s senior operations officer, Lieutenant Brooks, a human woman with a tawny complexion and close-cut, tightly curled black hair, silenced the alarm and checked her readouts. “Hazard alert in shuttlebay. Critically dangerous levels of hydrogen detected.”
At the adjacent console, female Trill navigator Lieutenant Asencia looked up in alarm. “Hydrogen? Mixed with the oxygen? One spark in there—”
“And we could lose the entire shuttlebay,” Brooks said, finishing the thought.
Janeway sprang to her feet. “Sound the alarm. Evacuate the shuttlebay!”
Tysess arrived at Janeway’s side. “Shuttlebay clear. Emergency venting engaged.”
“On whose order?”
Brooks looked back at Janeway. “It’s an automated response, Admiral.”
Janeway sensed something was amiss. “Yellow Alert.”
Tysess triggered the alert, which set yellow panels flashing on the bulkheads. From the ops console, Brooks reported, “Shuttlebay decompressed. Hydrogen dispersed, along with some cargo pods and small items left behind in—” Her expression turned to one of shock and embarrassment. “Admiral, the Romulan harrier was also ejected. It’s in a chaotic tumble heading aft.”
“On-screen!” Janeway watched as Brooks changed the main viewscreen to an aft angle showing the gap between Dauntless’s warp nacelles. The small Romulan ship was tumble-rolling away into the void. “How the hell did that happen? Weren’t its docking clamps engaged?”
“The engineers’ report said they were.” Brooks reacted as more alerts shrilled from her station. “Admiral, the harrier’s engines just came online. There’s someone on board.”
Janeway felt her temper rising. “And I bet I know who it is. Get a tractor beam on that ship! Put it back in the bay.”
Her tactical officer worked quickly, but as Janeway feared, Dauntless’s shimmering golden tractor beam bounced away from the harrier rather than taking hold. Brooks looked back again. “The harrier’s shields are up, Admiral.”
“Hail them!”
The communications officer responded almost instantly, “Channel open.”
“Dauntless to Seven of Nine. Seven, I know you’re on the Romulan harrier. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but let’s talk about this before you do something that can’t—”
On the main viewscreen, the harrier faded from view.
Her tactical officer reported with dry efficiency, “The harrier engaged its cloaking device, Admiral. We’ve lost them.”
She aimed a reproachful glare at the Vulcan man. “Thank you for captioning the obvious, Lieutenant Dokar. Who knows to what wild assumptions we might have leapt to without you?” Walking back to her command chair, she said for the entire bridge to hear, “Someone tell me something about this debacle that I don’t already know.”
Tysess returned to stand beside Janeway’s chair. “Sensor logs show Seven beamed someone and something out of Dauntless’s sickbay just before the harrier cloaked.”
Janeway started to understand not only what had happened, but why. “Computer, is Fenris Ranger Ellory Kayd still on board this ship?”
“Negative.”
“Is the body of Fenris Ranger Keon Harper still in our morgue?”
“Negative.”
Her first officer reacted to the computer’s reports with a look of confusion. “The Rangers’ tactics puzzle me, Admiral.”
“How so?”
“Why did they substantially increase their risk of detection and capture by splitting up, just so one of them could retrieve a dead body?”
His question made Janeway crack a wan smile. “Honor, Commander.” Seeing that he still wasn’t putting the pieces together, she added, “Because either Seven, the Fenris Rangers, or both share a core philosophy with Starfleet: we don’t leave our people behind.”
Tysess nodded slowly. “Now I understand. Thank you, Admiral.” He looked away, toward the forward duty stations. “Should we ask Starfleet for reinforcements to help us find the stolen harrier?”
“No. We’re already outside our jurisdiction and testing the limits of interstellar law as it is. I see nothing to be gained from escalating the situation.”
“Understood. Orders, Admiral?”
“Set course for the Qiris sector, slipstream ten. Stay alert for any sign of the harrier, General Kohgish, or Mister Tazgül.” She stood and smoothed the front of her uniform’s tunic. “I’ll be in my office. If you find anything, let me know. Commander Tysess, you have the conn.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
With the crisis of the moment utterly bungled but also effectively over, Janeway walked to the turbolift and got in. “B deck, aft.”
As the lift made its brief descent, Janeway’s thoughts turned inward. I ought to be angry. I should feel betrayed, or at least disrespected. But I can’t. If my back had been put to the wall under equivalent circumstances, I’d have done the same thing, and I know it. The turbolift halted and the doors opened. She exited, crossed the corridor, and entered her office. Planting herself behind her desk, she chortled softly at the irony of her circumstances. You learned my teachings well, Seven. Never let what’s lawful stop you from doing what’s right.
The holographic interface for the ship’s computer system appeared above her desk, having activated itself after automatically verifying her biometric data when she sat down. At the top of her incoming messages queue was an internally recorded missive flagged as URGENT.
It was from Seven.
Janeway checked its metadata. It had been recorded a short while earlier and had been set for delayed delivery. Clearly, Seven wanted to tell me something, but only after she and Ellory had made their escape.
Curious and oddly hopeful, Janeway played the message.
Seven’s face appeared inside the holographic frame. “Admiral. By now, Ellory and I will have left Dauntless, without your permission, in the Romulan harrier. I apologize for departing in this manner. I know it can only add to the professional and political difficulties you have endured because of your friendship with me, and for that, I am truly sorry.
“But I hope that when you hear what I need to say next, you might yet find some way to forgive me….”
Romulan Harrier Nodokata
Cloaked and lingering in the polar magnetic field of Achlys, a rogue star transiting the endless darkness, Nodokata was like a shadow in space. Hunkered in its cockpit, Seven watched the sensor display and listened for intercepted comms traffic. The mercenary frigate Eris and the tactical cruiser Bolvangar were both just a few light-minutes away, orbiting the rogue star’s equator—far enough away that neither was likely to detect a cloaked vessel at this range, through this much interference, but close enough that the upgraded sensor package and comms suite Veris had installed during his refit of the harrier could keep close track of their every word and action.
Ellory sat apart from Seven, conserving her energy but still sweating like a Risan socialator in a Bajoran temple. The cockpit was warm and getting warmer by the minute because Seven had insisted on “running silent,” minimizing the harrier’s sensor profile by limiting its energy usage and emissions. Though Seven had agreed to maintain atmospheric support inside the ship, she had reduced thermal maintenance to its minimum level, which left the temperature inside Nodokata at the mercy of the rogue star’s erratic radiation output.
Unable to contain her curiosity, Ellory asked, “What’re they doing now?”
“They are maintaining an equatorial orbit of the star.”
“ ‘Hurry-up-and-wait.’ When I was a kid, that was how my dad described his life in Starfleet. I never understood what he meant—until now.”
Seven looked up from the sensors. She wore the expression of someone trying not to let on that they were annoyed. “I presume that’s a commentary on our current mission?”
Ellory sighed. “It’s just been a bit choppy.”
“Choppy.”
“I’m just saying, we hauled ass away from Dauntless and zeroed in on Bolvangar in minutes, thanks to you having salted the latinum with sekenium before leaving the bank. Speaking of which, whose idea was that? Yours or Harper’s?”
“Harper’s. He called it ‘screw-up insurance.’ I think he anticipated our being robbed.”
“Sounds like Harper.” She climbed back aboard her train of thought. “Anyway, after that mad flurry of action, we’ve been sitting here doing nothing for almost an hour.”
“We’re waiting for the right moment to strike. The moment when our prey will be divided. Distracted. At their most vulnerable.”
“Which will be… when?”
“Hang on.” One of her screens indicated active comms traffic. Seven used the harrier’s military-grade decryption technology to break through the signal’s security coding and patched it through to the cockpit’s speakers so she and Ellory could listen to it together.
The first voice from the speaker was smooth, smarmy, and condescending. “We have Qulla and his ships on short-range sensors, coming in on bearing four eight mark seven. ETA, eight minutes. Are you and your men ready?”
Seven whispered to Ellory, “That was Tazgül.”
A voice like a growl replied, “Ready. But are you sure he won’t just rob us?”
Ellory whispered back, “Kohgish. I’d know his voice anywhere.”
“Just do as I said.” Tazgül sounded vexed. “Keep your men and his on opposite sides of the bay, and the latinum between you. Don’t let them flank or surround you. And no matter what, do not lower the force field around the latinum until after you get the codes for the ship.”
“I know the drill. But what if Qulla pulls some kind of surprise?”
“Then sound the alarm on this channel and I’ll intervene. But for both our sakes, try to get this done without me. Show your men—and me—that you’re ready to lead.”
“I will. But make sure you stay close.”
“I assure you, General, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Good luck. Mardani out.”
The channel went quiet. On the sensor display, Bolvangar accelerated away from Eris, maneuvering to put the mass of the rogue star between them and conceal Bolvangar from the incoming pair of Talarian vessels.
“Now we strike,” Seven said, restoring power to the engines. “I will move us into position. Go aft and select an appropriate loadout from Veris’s small-arms locker.”
Ellory started to head aft, then stopped and turned back. “Define ‘appropriate.’ ”
“Nonlethal, but with powerful wide-field effects.”
“Rifles or pistols?”
“Pistols, two each. Small, lightweight. Good for tight spaces. Our strategy will be to hit fast and keep moving.”
“Got it.” Her objective clarified, Ellory hurried aft to the weapons locker.
Seven engaged the harrier’s warp drive to make a microjump to within a few thousand kilometers of the frigate Eris. Nodokata’s arrival caused no discernible change in Eris’s orbit, nor did it provoke any frantic messages to Bolvangar, so Seven took the lack of reaction as confirmation that the harrier’s cloaking device continued to perform as intended.
She eased the harrier forward at quarter impulse, cautious not to stir up any eddies in the solar wind currents. In under half a minute she had Nodokata parked and holding station precisely fifty meters beneath Eris’s main hull. A quick check of passive sensors confirmed where its crew were located. Four had been left on its command deck. Another cluster of eight remained in main engineering. Two were in the sickbay. But the majority of the ship’s complement, twenty-six persons, was heading to the aft lower decks—the ship’s main shuttlebay.
Seven recalled Tazgül’s instructions to Kohgish and deduced that the big meeting between Kohgish and the Talarian broker was going to take place in the shuttlebay. After a quick, final review of the frigate’s deck schematics, Seven settled on her plan of attack.
She headed aft and met Ellory at the transporter pad. “We’re in position. We have just over five minutes until the Talarian broker arrives.” Seven handed Ellory two small disks. “Transporter recall triggers. One for you, one for the latinum in case we get separated.”
“Copy that.” Ellory pocketed the disks and handed Seven a pair of Romulan-made disruptor pistols. “Small and light, with a wide-field heavy stun that can drop a charging hengrauggi.”
“A what?”
“Really big predator.”
“Perfect.” Seven stepped onto the transporter pad. “Computer, stand by to beam us directly onto the command deck of the frigate above us.”
“Coordinates locked. Standing by.”
Ellory took her place on the pad beside Seven. “What’s the plan?”
“Start at the top, work our way down.”
“Sounds good.” She drew her disruptors from their holsters. “Let’s rock.”
Seven mirrored Ellory’s pose, disruptors at the ready. “Computer—energize.”