21

“Keep trying to raise the Homghor,” Kang snapped at Kyris.

The communications officer wisely avoided eye contact with Kang and kept her focus on her console and displays. “Still no response, Captain.”

A cat-and-mouse game played out on the viewscreen. The bird-of-prey veered away from the planet, as if it meant to leave orbit; the Sagittarius emerged from the debris rings and pursued the Homghor, which responded with evasive maneuvers. That was proof enough for Kang that Captain Durak and his crew were no longer in control of their ship. “Helm! After them! All ahead full. Mahzh, charge all weapons. Target both vessels and fire at will.”

The weapons officer turned his lanky frame toward Kang. “Captain?”

“You heard me. Destroy them both.” His repetition of the unusual order prompted wary looks from his senior officers. He was not in the habit of explaining himself or justifying his orders to his subordinates, but given their predicament, he made an exception. “Durak is a blowhard, but he would never run from a battle. The Homghor has been captured, probably by those novpu’ it beamed up. We can’t let them escape with an Imperial starship.”

Mara moved quickly to his side. “Are you sure that’s the only option? We could send over a boarding party to retake the ship.”

He scowled at the image of the fleeing vessel. “Mahzh said it himself—their shields are up. Until they drop, we can’t beam over, and we can’t take remote control of their computer.”

Mahzh remained unsettled. “Captain, what if the Homghor’s crew is still alive?”

“If they are, they’re either prisoners or traitors. Either way, death is their reward.”

Doubts plagued the weapons officer. “But if we knock out its shields, we can access its computer. I could run a command override and trigger the ship’s intruder counter­measures.”

“And if these novpu’ are immune to nerve gas? Then what?”

His debate with Mahzh seemed to kindle a spark of hope in Mara. She rested her hand on Kang’s arm, a gesture more in keeping with her role as his wife than as his first officer. “We could vent the Homghor’s atmosphere into space. I don’t care how powerful these creatures are—the last time we checked, they still needed to breathe something.”

“We don’t have time to pull our punches, Mara. The Federation battle cruiser is only minutes away. I want this dealt with before they arrive.” He noted with satisfaction that Ortok had carried out his orders and accelerated into a pursuit course. The Voh’tahk was only moments from optimal firing range on both the Sagittarius and the Homghor. Now all Kang needed was for the rest of his officers to perform their jobs as well as the helmsman had done.

Mahzh sat down and scanned the Voh’tahk’s two targets. “The Sagittarius is opening fire on the Homghor,” he reported. “The bird-of-prey is continuing evasive maneuvers.”

Kang watched Mara, whose keen eyes observed the battle between the two smaller ships. Had she witnessed the same telltale clue he had just noticed? “What do you see?”

“Those aren’t the maneuvers of a skilled helmsman.” Her gaze narrowed. “That’s the work of the autopilot system.” Her mood darkened. “You’re right. They’ve lost their ship.”

Being right about the fate of the Homghor gave Kang no pleasure. “The novpu’ robbed Durak and his crew of honor. We will give it back to them.” He smiled as he watched the scout ship pepper the Homghor’s shields with another volley of phaser fire. “Best of all, the Starfleeters will take the blame. As long as we keep their battle cruiser in check, we might yet coax a victory from this wretched day. Mahzh! Do you have a targeting lock yet?”

“Negative. Both ships are moving too quickly for a hard lock.”

Kang took a few seconds to study the smaller vessels’ flight pattern. Both ships were pushing their impulse engines into overdrive, accelerating them to more than half the speed of light. He could only imagine the strain being inflicted on their inertial-dampening systems. He called up a tactical profile on his command monitor and relayed it to Mahzh’s station. “Set the torpedoes for spread pattern Qib’HoH and use the disruptors to limit their maneuvering options.”

“Yes, Captain.” Mahzh armed the Voh’tahk’s disruptors and torpedoes. Moments later, the first salvo launched from the nose of the battle cruiser, followed moments later by several sweeping blasts from its twin disruptor cannons. Searing flashes of light erupted on the main viewscreen as Mahzh declared, “No direct hits. Minor damage to both ships.”

“Lock and fire again. Spread pattern Qaw’Hoch, disruptors for flank coverage.”

Another barrage of torpedoes sped away from the Voh’tahk as crimson streaks on the viewscreen. The dense red cluster scattered into far-flung ruddy sparks as viridescent pulses from the cruiser’s disruptor cannons arced through the emptiness around them. Then came another blinding matter-antimatter supernova that washed out the viewscreen for a fraction of a second.

Kang winced but forced his eyes to stay open and fixed upon his prey, even though the two ships were little more than grayish blurs darting in and out of sight. “Mahzh, report.”

“Both ships slowing. Homghor is venting coolant from its impulse system. Sagittarius is leaking plasma from its port warp nacelle.” He reacted to a sensor update. “They’re changing course—orbiting the planet. Sagittarius is closing on the Homghor and locking weapons.” Another alert buzzed on his console until he silenced it with a swat of his hand. “The Endeavour is six minutes out and scanning the system.”

A channel light blinked on the communications panel. Kyris pressed her hand to her earpiece to block out ambient noise from the bridge while she listened. “The Endeavour is hailing us, Captain. Its commander orders us to cease our pursuit and break orbit.”

“It’ll be a bright day in Gre’thor before I take orders from a Starfleet captain. Tell the Endeavour its scout fired on the Homghor, and we are responding in kind. End of message.”

On the viewscreen, the Sagittarius chased the bird-of-prey once more through the planet’s multicolored rings of ice-crusted rocky debris. Both vessels left slowly dissipating vapor trails—one a bluish twist of expanding coolant, the other a dusky streak of ionized plasma.

As the Homghor pushed itself through a hard turn, slowed, and made a shallow dive into Arethusa’s atmosphere with the Sagittarius mere seconds behind it, Kang saw the moment he’d been waiting for. “Mahzh! Spread pattern yay’joq—directly ahead of the Homghor!”

“Locked!”

Now the novpu’ and the Starfleeters would both learn the price one paid for being an enemy of the Klingon Empire.

“Fire!”

• • •

The unearthly, minor-key wailing of the Sagittarius’s engines grew louder and pitched farther up the tonal scale with each passing moment. Terrell clung to the command chair’s armrests as he shouted to be heard over the fusion-powered din. “Port yaw, ten degrees! Lock phasers!”

Each roll and hard turn of the scout ship overloaded the inertial dampeners, and the turbulence had become far worse now that they had penetrated the planet’s mesosphere. Terrell was certain he heard the hull plates shuddering against one another, and he felt the temperature rising from the intense friction of atmosphere against the ship’s duranium skin.

Sorak’s stately voice cut through the clamor: “Incoming! Brace for impact!”

“Pull up!” Terrell needed to stop the bird-of-prey, but not enough to let his ship go down with it, not if there was any other path to victory. “Evasive, starboard!”

White light burst from the viewscreen as a deafening concussion rocked the ship. For one heart-stopping moment, Terrell thought his ship had been shot out from under him—then the glare on the screen faded to gray static, and the eardrum-punishing thunder dwindled to a steady rumbling—revealing the sudden downward pitch of the engines’ whine.

He thumbed open a channel to engineering. “Damage report!”

Ilucci hollered over a nightmare of hissing, grinding, and shrieking mechanical noise. “We took that one on the nose, Skip! Starboard nacelle’s ruptured, warp core’s down!”

Terrell watched the image on the viewscreen switch to a head-on angle of the planet’s surface—which meant the ship was plunging nose-first toward the sea. “What about impulse?”

“We were hopin’ you wouldn’t ask.” A low boom over the comm coincided with a frightening tremor that shot through the deck and dimmed the overhead lights. Over the comm, frantic shouts full of jargon and curses were muffled by crackles and pops. Ilucci coughed. “Just lost the fusion core. Main power’s toast. We’re on batteries.”

No main power. That meant no phasers, no torpedoes, no shields. Whether Terrell liked it or not, his battle with the bird-of-prey was over. It was time to salvage his own ship, if it was still possible. “Helm! Can you maneuver on thrusters?”

Nizsk struggled with four of her six limbs to lift the scout ship out of its dive. “Negative, sir. Insufficient power. We need the impulse engine! Even one-tenth power would be enough.”

The roar of atmosphere against the hull grew louder by the second. Overhead, the main lights stuttered and went dark, leaving the bridge crew illuminated only by faint spills of light from their consoles and the flickering video hash of the main viewscreen.

Terrell hoped the channel to engineering was still open. “Master Chief? We can’t pull up on just thrusters. Can you run the impulse coil off the batteries?”

“Negative—the lines have been severed!”

“How long to run a patch?”

“Ten minutes.”

Nizsk looked back from the helm. “We will hit the surface in four.”

Terrell knew Ilucci had heard that. “Master Chief?”

“Roger that, Skipper. One miracle, comin’ up. Engineering out!”

A dark streak cut a smoky diagonal line across the viewscreen. Terrell pointed at it. “What was that?”

Sorak slapped his stuttering console until its display stabilized. “That was the Homghor, sir. It suffered a direct hit. All its primary systems are offline.”

Down in flames and falling like a rock. Terrell heaved a grim sigh. Watching the bird-of-prey plummet to its doom gave him no sense of accomplishment, no pride of victory. All he could think of was how terrified anyone still alive on that ship must have felt at that ­moment.

The Sagittarius jolted, as if it had been struck by something solid. Then the ship jerked and rocked again as plasma manifolds ruptured in the overhead, showering short-lived sparks across the bridge and everyone on it. Terrell acted by reflex, swearing under his breath as he swatted white-hot phosphors from his head, shoulders, arms, and thighs. “What hit us?”

“Disruptor blasts from the Voh’tahk,” Sorak said. “It seems Captain Kang plans to make sure we do not recover from our current dilemma.”

Taryl vented her disgust. “Kicking us while we’re down? So much for Klingon honor.”

Terrell almost had to laugh. “Their notion of honor and ours tend to differ, Ensign.”

Nizsk gave up trying to make the helm respond to her commands and resigned herself to reading off the countdown until their collective demise. “Three minutes and thirty seconds.”

As fervently as Terrell wanted to believe his engineers could work yet another miracle, he had to proceed on the assumption that they couldn’t. “Chief Razka, Ensign Taryl. Round up any non-essential personnel and report to the escape pod.”

The Saurian and the Orion both were out of their seats before Sorak stopped them. “Belay that order. Our unshielded entry into the atmosphere compounded damage already sustained to the pod’s release mechanism. It is jammed and cannot be ejected, not even manually.”

The field scouts returned to their stations and sat down. Terrell watched the details of the surface grow sharper through the hazy veil of static on the viewscreen. “Commander, is our subspace antenna still working?”

The Vulcan nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“In that case, I think we’d better send out an S.O.S.—while we still can.”

• • •

Darkness, sickening smoke, and fire surrounded Nimur. Orange flames licked at her flesh but brought little pain. She was pinned against one of the walls inside the ship, held fast by some invisible force even greater than the one she now wielded. It had seized her and her Wardens just after a booming crash had buffeted the vessel and extinguished its lights. The pressure that had snared her was so great she could barely draw breath, and it took every bit of fight she had left to raise her voice above the eerie howling that engulfed the metal sky-ship.

“Senjin! Make the Klingon speak to his ship! Make it stop!”

The Warden grimaced and struggled to reply. “The captain is dead. The fire took him.”

Nimur cursed the dead Klingon commander for his weak flesh. “Then we need to make it obey us!” She recalled the phrases they had forced the Klingon to reveal, the ones that had enabled him to control the ship by verbal commands alone. “Computer! Engage override!”

She waited several seconds, but nothing happened; her desperate order went unheeded. As far as she could tell, it had gone unheard by anyone except her Wardens. Whatever part of the ship had obeyed Durak, it was as dead now as he was.

Cracks cut across the walls. Wind screamed through the spreading fissures. The rush of fresh air fed the flames around Nimur, stoking them into a yellow-white blaze.

The ship lurched and rocked, and the invisible hand holding the Changed against the back wall evaporated. They tumbled forward, slammed against the elevated command chair and its platform, caromed off railings and consoles, and landed in a heap against the opposite wall. Only minutes earlier the central panel on that wall had been like a window on the universe, looking down at their world from high above. Now it was dull and blank, just an empty frame.

Disoriented and stumbling like someone drunk on fermented nectar, Nimur seized Senjin by his shoulders and shook him until he focused on her. “We need to get off this ship!”

“How?”

“The same way we came here, with the portal device.”

The Warden shook his head. “We don’t know how it works. Or if it even still does.”

She pulled him to his feet. “We have to try! Get the others up and follow me.” She waited until they were all standing and looking at her. She pointed up, at the back of the ship that was now above them thanks to the ship’s surrender to gravity. “We need to get back there.”

A Warden protested, “There are no handholds! How are we supposed to climb?”

“We can lift each other! Concentrate! We need to work together!” She closed her eyes for a moment and purged herself of fear. Then she reached out and embraced the Wardens with her power, and a wave of relief washed over her as she felt their mental energies uniting with one another’s and with hers. In her mind she divested herself of the burden of weight and willed herself to rise, slipping free of the leaden chains of the world below—and she did.

Her feet rose from the metal wall and she climbed up and away, as free as smoke on a breeze. Behind her followed the Wardens. Senjin had tethered himself to Nimur, and the others followed single-file behind them, each one helping to pull up the next.

They snaked through the ship’s empty passageways and through a narrow ladderway to the next deck. Nimur led them by memory alone, retracing the steps from their first rampage through the ship, until they were gathered once more in the room where they all had appeared after being stolen from the sea. She pointed Senjin toward the panel she assumed controlled the Klingons’ mysterious portal. “Wake it up! Hurry!”

He tapped at the console, slammed his hands against its sides, and finally punched and kicked it out of sheer frustration. “It’s as dead as the rest of this ship!”

Loud booms resounded through the vessel’s fracturing hull. Walls and floors buckled. Narrow strips of the hull tore free and broke away, driven by gusts of wind and plumes of fire, revealing slivers of Arethusa’s twilight sky streaked with sun-splashed clouds.

Black, acrid smoke filled the small compartment, and tongues of flame licked through the open doorway from the corridor, which transformed within seconds into a roaring conflagration.

The youngest of the Wardens, a sinewy youth named Masul, gave in to panic and shouted like the frightened child he had been only hours earlier. “Nimur! What are we going to do?”

“The only thing we can do,” she said, determined to face the inevitable with her pride intact. “We’re going into the fire.”

• • •

Kang watched the Homghor and the Sagittarius plunge toward the planet’s surface, each ship wreathed in flames and trailing grayish-black smoke all the way from the mesosphere to the sea. He had dealt each mortally wounded ship a deathstroke with blasts from the Voh’tahk’s disruptor cannons, just to make certain neither vessel returned to haunt him.

“Mahzh. Any sign of them restoring main power?”

The weapons officer gazed at his sensor display. “None.”

“Time to impact?”

“Approximately two minutes.”

The captain looked at the command monitor beside his chair. The Starfleet battle cruiser would arrive in just under four minutes. Though he would have preferred to observe the final moments of the Homghor and the Sagittarius, to be certain the deed was accomplished beyond reversal, he couldn’t afford to wait that long to confront his next opponent. “Well done, soldiers of the Empire! A battle well-fought! But it’s not over—in fact, it’s only just begun. Helm! Increase to full impulse. Get us into position to meet the Federation battle cruiser.”

The Voh’tahk’s engines wailed and its hull groaned as it accelerated far past its rated orbital velocity. It was the sound of a ship’s limits being tested—music to Kang’s ears.

On the main viewscreen, he perceived the faintest gray dot moving among the stars and ever so slowly growing larger and brighter. At last, he would have an opponent worthy of him.

“Mahzh, as soon as it’s in range . . . lock all weapons on the Endeavour.”