“Tell me you have EVA suits,” Daniels said to Kalita.
She glared at him in response, then walked three meters away and pulled open a locker that contained a set of gear. Without a word, she tossed pieces to Tregaar and then grabbed a set for herself.
La Forge and Daniels shared exasperated looks while Riker was introduced to the other three who were to be their guest on the Anaximenes. One was a young human woman, barely out of her teens, the second was another Tellarite, and the final person was a Deltan man with the largest biceps the commander had ever seen.
“Geordi, is Maass’s idea a practical one?”
La Forge thought a moment, rubbing his chin, a habit Riker recognized all too readily. The delay told him that his engineer had ideas, probably several, considering the ship wasn’t in great shape to begin with.
“Yes, sir,” La Forge said. “I would think we can rig a time-delayed overload of the engine. I want us well away from here before the antimatter pod ruptures.”
“How big a yield would the blast be?”
“I see where you’re going,” Daniels jumped in. “The blast would most certainly reach the fighter and take it as well, making for a bigger burst.”
“Big enough to attract the Cardassians’ attention and let us slip away,” Riker said. “You know, I forgot you were our resident demolitions expert.”
“Yeah, I’ve always had an affinity for blowing things up,” Daniels said, grinning.
La Forge interrupted and Riker could practically see the figurative lightbulb over his head. “I had a thought. We have three probes aboard the Anaximenes, and I can rig those to emit signatures similar to the Maquis’ engines and throw them farther off the scent.”
“Good,” Riker said. “You and Daniels get a head start on rigging the engines. I want a word with the new crew. We’ll meet you at the airlock.”
“I’ll need maybe ten minutes down there,” La Forge said and Riker nodded acknowledgment.
Within minutes, the five were in their space suits and were checking each other’s seals. It hurt Riker to watch La Forge hobble across the deck. He hoped there’d be no running involved between ships.
“Okay, here are the ground rules,” he said, addressing the quintet before him. “We know our shuttle, you don’t, so just sit where I put you and if I ask for help, be ready to do whatever I say without question. The only way we’re all going to survive is if we work together. Your politics, your personal belief systems have to go on hold until we’re clear of the Cardassians. Understood?”
The girl, Indira, nodded; the Tellarite, Gavron, followed suit; and the Deltan, Banek, simply said, “Yes.” Tregaar and Kalita said nothing, but Riker took their silence as acquiescence.
He checked a chronometer built into his suit and realized the others weren’t going to be ready yet. Still, he could easily herd these five back to the shuttle and begin preflight.
“Right, let’s get to the airlock.”
The line of people trudged single file in their suits, the extra bulk filling the narrow confines of the ship. They all heard the movement of other members of the crew scrambling above and below them.
Fortunately, the crossing back to the Anaximenes was a lot less harrowing than La Forge’s first trip. Minutes after they began walking on the moon’s surface, Riker saw the first of the remaining crew begin working their way toward the other craft. He estimated that both crafts should be ready to take off within thirty minutes and prayed the Cardassians wouldn’t arrive before that. Even with the rigged explosions and decoys, he still needed a course for the ships.
As they walked, he fell in beside Kalita, who seemed all too ready to ignore him.
“Tell me about the other ship,” he asked.
She said nothing for a moment, then finally replied,
“It’s a converted pleasure cruiser. We obtained it from salvage after it hit an asteroid. The engine can get up to maybe warp five if the engineer is capable. I don’t know her. Malames, the pilot, is good. Not as good as me, but she can follow.”
“Good to know,” Riker said.
“You know, Riker, I really don’t like being in a subservient position to you.”
“This is all a matter of convenience, not choice. Just come for the ride.”
He left her alone before she could respond, turning his mind to what he recalled about the system and surrounding DMZ.
Soon he had everyone aboard the shuttle, and they took their gear off one at a time given the space considerations. Riker went first so he could begin powering up the shuttle for departure. Before heading forward, he pointed out where everyone should remain. The diagnostics showed that La Forge’s ministrations helped tremendously and the propulsion would be sufficient. Riker then called up charts and the sensor readings they took upon entering the zone. He heard the others grumble behind him, keeping their comments to themselves, which was fortunate since he really didn’t want more arguments.
Exterior monitors showed that La Forge and Daniels were finally making their way to the Anaximenes while the last of the others were vanishing from sight as they neared the other ship. He reached across to the passenger side controls and set up an active communications link to the other ship for later. Then he settled into the pilot’s chair and began activating the systems and engaging the engine. Everything hummed along, the sound emanating from behind giving him confidence.
Within minutes, his crewmates were aboard and taking off their gear. They made their way through the body of people and took the seats by Riker. La Forge sat beside the first officer while Daniels took his accustomed place behind them. Riker noted that Daniels had a sidearm strapped to his hip. He gave him a quizzical look, and Daniels’s incredulous expression more or less said, “Are you kidding me? I’m not traveling with five Maquis and not be prepared in case they decide to steal the shuttle.” And he couldn’t really argue with his security chief. He’d likely have done the same thing.
“We’re looking good, Commander,” La Forge said as he double-checked the systems.
“Riker to Maass.”
“This is Maass.”
“What’s your status?”
“We can leave the surface in about five minutes.”
“We have about that long to begin clearing space if we want to avoid any shock wave from the explosion. Hurry it up.”
Riker then turned to La Forge, whose fingers were already flying across a control board, configuring the probes. On one screen, he noted the energy signature from the other shuttle taken from the sensor logs. Bit by bit, the signature being emitted from the probes began to resemble it until, at a glance, they matched. It wouldn’t stand up against truly sophisticated investigation, and he hoped the Cardassians were blood-thirsty enough to be hasty, not thorough.
“Good work, Geordi. Ready?”
“No question about that, sir,” La Forge said.
Riker’s hands maneuvered the controls and the shuttle began to lift up slowly. He checked to make certain the propulsion units worked in balance. A warning sensor indicated they were over normal weight tolerances but not enough to cause a critical situation. Good thing this was a temporary arrangement. It would still make evasive maneuvers tough, but he’d already begun rethinking several ideas. After all, if he’d learned anything from Picard, it was to be prepared for any contingency given the circumstances. Having four Cardassian fighters seeking you certainly qualified as a time to be prepared.
“Probes are ready.”
“Good. Daniels, you’ll launch them on my mark. Geordi, I want to keep an eye on the systems, just in case.”
“Since when do you doubt my handiwork?”
“Doubt your work? Not at all. This just strikes me as one of those times that when we need everything to work with precision, something will go wrong.”
“I call that Monday,” La Forge said with a laugh.
Riker chuckled and eased the craft higher above the moon. The craters shrank in size and the mountain range nearby seemed picturesque, no longer ominous. He spotted the other vessel rising from the surface nice and smooth.
“Kalita,” Riker called behind him, “what’s the name of that ship?”
“Its pilot dubbed it the Liberté,” she said.
“That’s ‘freedom’ in French,” Daniels said helpfully.
“No kidding,” Riker said with sarcasm.
“I thought you were Irish,” La Forge said.
“A student of foreign tongues, I guess. I dated a French girl at the Academy.”
Both ships continued to rise, and Riker plotted out courses for the probes plus the escape route he wanted the ships to take. La Forge confirmed that the decisions made sense to him, and things ran quietly and smoothly. Riker suspected it wouldn’t last, not with the enemy so close by.
“T minus two minutes,” Daniels said.
“We going to make it clear?” Tregaar asked from the rear.
“Don’t see why not,” Riker said tightly, coaxing the shuttle for a little extra energy to be safe.
“Me either, don’t worry,” La Forge said to reassure his friend.
At the one-minute mark, Riker warned the Liberté and then banked the shuttle onto its course, leaving the moon’s gravity well and allowing them to safely engage the warp engines right after the explosion. The Maquis ship followed precisely—he was pleased Kalita’s estimation of the other pilot was accurate.
Right on schedule, a brilliant white light suddenly blossomed on the surface. Given the lack of atmosphere for drag, the shock waves reverberated through the void, and Riker braced his hands on the controls, suspecting they were not as far away as they should be. Sure enough, seconds later, the shuttle rocked from side to side, though more gently than he expected. Still, someone’s head banged against a bulkhead and he heard an interesting Orion curse from the injured party, surprisingly, the girl Indira.
Sensors indicated the Liberté was a little more shaken up by the energy emission, but it remained on course, right behind the Anaximenes. Riker silently counted to five, then instructed that the probes be released. As they flew away from the shuttle, he activated their transmission so it might resemble Maquis craft leaving the moon as a result of the explosion.
All he had to worry about now was being found by the Cardassians. Clever as this plan was, he still suspected that eluding four craft would be virtually impossible before they could clear the DMZ and get back into Federation space. He had them heading for Sol Arion, the nearest Federation system over the border, but if there was a chase, he didn’t doubt for a moment the Cardassians would follow and deal with the political fallout later. They always seemed to think the treaties meant nothing when it came to taking down the Maquis.
“We’ve cleared the gravity well,” La Forge said.
“Mr. Daniels, charge the phaser banks and be on alert. Anyone coming this way gets the first shot.”
“Got it,” he said.
“They’re clear, too,” said La Forge.
“Probes are on track,” Riker confirmed. “We can go to warp now, I think.”
“I’d recommend we not push things for either ship,” La Forge said. “Let’s try warp three and make certain we’re moving smoothly.”
“Acknowledged,” Riker said. “Anaximenes to Liberté. Prepare to go to warp three on my mark.”
Malames, the Liberté’s pilot, confirmed and Riker was satisfied.
He was about to send them into warp when the crimson proximity alert began flashing. Its strobelike effect filled the front of the ship with an intermittent red sheen.
“What’s going on?” Tregaar demanded to know.
“Shut up,” Daniels called back. “What’s going on, sir?”
“Two Cardassian ships just cleared Salva II, heading this way. They picked up one of the probe emissions. I’ll need to move us away, and we can’t go to warp as yet. Riker to Malames.”
“I see them, Commander,” Malames said. The clipped tone indicated she was used to taking commands, leading Riker to assume she was ex-Starfleet. That was to her advantage.
“We need to dodge them, and a warp bubble would be sending up a flare,” Riker said as he considered his meager options.
“May I respectfully suggest we hide in the asteroid belt?”
“Terrific suggestion. I’ll take point. Also, we’re now running silent.”
“Acknowledged. Liberté out.”
“This should be fun,” La Forge said bitterly as he gripped both armrests on his chair.
Riker dove down the z-axis then banked the shuttle to arc away from the moon and the probes, heading at an angle to the three false signals but making a direct line toward the asteroid belt between the outermost worlds in the Salva system. He moved at impulse power, keeping the ship steady and praying the Cardassians would track each signal separately, from closest to farthest, which would be the Liberté and then the Anaximenes. He wasn’t looking for a fight, simply trying to avoid detection. There were several hundred million kilometers to go, and he noted that the Cardassian ships were increasing speed, finally having something tangible to track. A part of his mind mused as to where the other two might be. Most likely, if he were the gul in command, the other two were just outside the system in case of the very escape Riker was attempting.
One hundred fifty million kilometers before entering the asteroid belt. Riker began intensively scanning the area, plotting a course that would allow them to weave inside as deeply as was practical. He was pleased to see the variety of metals embedded in the chunks of rock that ranged from the size of his fist to that of the continent of Australia. There were countless asteroids orbiting the Salva sun, and he needed to avoid hitting each and every one of them.
One hundred million kilometers. He sought sensor gaps—those asteroids with difficult-to-probe mineralogical content, praying for a cluster he could hide two ships near. A few spots but all too small. Unfortunately, that meant going deeper.
Fifty million kilometers. Nothing was coming up, and Riker was beginning to feel very tense as the Cardassians were now nearing the first probe. Once they realized it was a fake signature, they’d step up their search. Maybe be hasty and let them slip by or spot them like an eagle and make a direct approach. Exposed like this, one phaser bank against two fighters were not odds he liked.
Small bits of rock appeared on the forward viewscreen. They were entering the outer fringes of the asteroid belt, the Liberté right behind them. He imagined Malames to be a former conn officer, which was exactly what he needed right now.
Twenty-five thousand kilometers within the asteroid field, Riker began the delicate dance to avoid the smaller pieces from damaging their minimal shielding. They moved along in silence, dipping here, rising there, with one hard bank to starboard that brought a fresh round of curses from his passengers. At least they were remaining mostly quiet.
Seventy-five thousand kilometers in. He needed to maneuver the shuttle a little more often now, but he was also finding more sensor gaps. There was a particular blind spot that looked promising and he eased the shuttle toward it, the Maquis craft his mirror image. The Cardassian ships had already destroyed two of the probes, leaving just one innocent device out there and the two ships in here. He was feeling tension in his shoulders and a single bead of sweat creased his forehead. A glance showed him that atmospheric controls were nominal, so it was just worry making things hot for him.
One hundred fifty thousand kilometers in, the signal from the final probe went dark.
Two hundred thousand kilometers in, Riker was finally getting close enough to the mammoth asteroids that were clustered, creating the blind spot. They were large enough to land on, if necessary, but he preferred a parked position between the frozen remains of some long-dead planet. The Liberté seemed to have found a spot it liked, taking up a point equidistant between three of the asteroids. Riker nodded with approval and then eased the Anaximenes into a similar position but between two of the largest asteroids, making any visual contact with the Cardassians and even the Liberté just about impossible.
At two hundred thirty-three thousand kilometers inside the asteroid belt, the Anaximenes came to rest, and Riker let out a breath he finally realized he had been holding.
“Nice driving,” La Forge said, breaking the silence that had lasted for quite some time.
“We can’t scan for them, either,” Daniels noted.
“We’ll be going strictly on visual for now.”
“I’ll take that. We can alternate the watch.”
“And how long do you expect us to remain here in hiding?”
Riker rose and took two steps toward the defiant Tregaar. “As long as it takes. Have somewhere to be? Something better to do than survive?”
Tregaar’s eyes radiated anger, but he wisely said nothing further. Instead, Kalita moved forward, daring to leave her assigned spot. It didn’t look like she cared if that annoyed Riker or not.
“Let me help. I can take a watch, too. It’s not like I’m inexperienced at playing cat and mouse with the Cardies,” she said.
She had a point, and better to have her invested in their survival. He nodded in agreement and gestured to the chair next to Daniels. The security chief activated the controls by her position so she too had a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the area. “Welcome to the party,” he said with a grin.
Kalita settled in, looked at the various controls without touching them, and then stared intently at the screens, seeking the enemy. It took some time before she noticed that she was no longer opposite Daniels, but Riker, who had switched places. He gazed at her with deep interest, which seemed to unnerve her a bit.
“How well did you know him?”
She remained silent, unwilling to answer, so he continued to stare at her. Finally, she relented with a heavy sigh.
“Well enough. We worked together for months planning the operation. He worked very hard. He very much wanted it to be a success.”
“What was he like?”
That caught her by surprise and she blinked a few times as she considered the response. “He was funny. Always had a crack for people. He never took his eye off the prize—Orias. The joking façade made him easily liked and readily accessible, but you could tell he had something to prove.”
“What?”
“That he was his own man,” she shot at him. “That he wasn’t you. That’s really what you want to know, isn’t it?”
“I knew he wasn’t me from the moment we met,” Riker said tightly. He could feel himself stiffen, shields going up, but he forced them back. Deep down, he needed to understand the betrayal.
“Tom truly questioned the Federation’s action,” she continued, not meeting his eyes. “He wasn’t faking to be different. Something about that time in isolation seemed to change whatever you two had in common, and he became someone else. He believed in the cause and readily wanted to help.
“Where he went wrong, I think, is when he pushed the mission harder than he needed to. We could have cloaked and made a beeline to Orias, discovered if the building facility was true, and if so, blast it and get out. Instead, he had to send the nearby ships away, which brought the rest of the fleet down on us.”
Riker had read Sisko’s mission briefing report, of course, augmented by the comments appended by Kira Nerys, who seemed to display unusual sympathy for Tom’s situation. He could have done exactly as Kalita outlined but didn’t, and that gnawed at him.
“He was trying to outcommand me,” Riker said, more to himself than to the Maquis woman.
“Maybe,” she said softly. “The decoy was a brilliant but unnecessary idea. It put us all at risk.”
“Even if it did expose the Obsidian Order’s treachery,” Riker added.
“Then he gave up,” she spat. “Rather than go down fighting, as we were prepared to do, he just sacrificed himself and cost us the Defiant.”
“We weren’t all that different in the end, were we?”
“Maybe not, if you were as soft and self-sacrificing as he proved, but in all the wrong ways.” Her growing anger surprised Riker. He studied her body language, her expression, and, being a judge of fine women, came to a conclusion.
“You fell for him, didn’t you?”
“Not that he noticed,” she said in a loud, anguished voice. “Not even a hug good-bye. No, he had to first force me to give command to her, then he…kissed her and vanished!”
The first “her” confirmed it was Kira. Tom kissed Kira. Interesting. He had no idea there was any spark between them. For a moment, he wondered what that must have felt like. How she tasted.
Forcing his attention back to Kalita, the spurned woman, he gave her a look of sympathy that was met with disdain. She returned her attention to the monitor screen.
“I’m just so damned tired of fighting,” she said, without looking at the commander.
The conversation was clearly over, and he felt that he learned only a little more about what Tom’s life was like. He remained conflicted over that, disgusted by the actions his double took but trying to understand what compelled him. Certainly, his experience diverged enough that he could see the disillusionment with Starfleet. After all, Tom wasn’t the first Starfleet officer to abandon his post for the Maquis. Unlike the others, though, he accomplished a great deal that not only helped the Maquis but also improved Starfleet’s intelligence.
A brief swell of pride filled him, the first positive emotion he had felt for Tom in ages.
It wasn’t enough, though, since it still meant he stole the Defiant and endangered others to prove a personal point.
“Commander!”
La Forge’s voice had enough panic in it to put him on instant alert.
“The Liberté is moving and I’d swear they’ve been spotted,” the engineer said from the pilot’s chair.
Riker looked at the screen before him, noting the somewhat erratic pattern being employed. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Let me try something.” La Forge carefully took the Anaximenes out of position, rising above the asteroids that had hidden it for a time. Inching up at a very slow rate, Riker strained to find something substantive.
“I see it, top right of the screen,” Daniels called.
Sure enough, a small bit of Cardassian fighter was visible, and given the other ship’s position, it was more likely spotted. Now they’d be found, too, and it was time to act. He found himself looking forward to doing something proactive for a change.
“Daniels, get back here and ready phasers,” Riker said, rising from the seat. “I’ll take it from here.”
The two quickly changed seats, Kalita watching in silence.
Riker settled in and brought the impulse engines on line. He kept them at minimal levels, just enough to maneuver for the moment, but warmed and ready if they needed acceleration. He switched sensor readouts and concentrated them directly on the fighter, gleaming golden against the blackness of space. No doubt, the second ship was right behind it, flying in some formation, which also took it out of the equation at the moment.
Clearly, the Maquis ship was seeking some other place to hide, but it continued to expose its flanks to the Cardassians. Riker pushed the sensors, expecting the Cardassians to be charging weapons and targeting. They, like the Klingons, preferred to shoot first, interrogate any survivors second.
“Commander, structural integrity’s at only ninety-four percent,” La Forge said.
“Great,” Riker muttered. “Will that affect us in a fight?”
“I hope not.”
“Not the kind of reassurance I was looking for.” Riker swung the shuttle farther up, now glancing time and again at a new readout, this one of the hull integrity. A display above that changed hue, and the new data caused him alarm.
“They’re targeting,” he said. “Brace yourselves.” As he spoke, he increased speed and changed his course, placing the Anaximenes between the Liberté and the Cardassians. After all, last he checked, pleasure cruisers did not come armed. The shuttle responded without complaint, and the increased whine in impulse thrust sounded perfectly normal.
“I’m targeting their disruptor emitters,” Daniels said.
“You’ll have one shot at it.” Riker continued to work the controls, fighting the urge to try maneuvers a star-ship—not a shuttle—was built for. Yet, being smaller and somewhat more maneuverable, there were certain things a shuttle could do better.
“Here goes,” Riker said, increasing the speed and adjusting the angle, giving Daniels as clear a shot as possible.
“Firing,” the security chief said.
A single phaser beam reached across the void and impacted on the Cardassian ship’s shields. They were close enough that the impact would be considerable, and the best they could hope for was to weaken the shield directly in front of their disruptors.
Then the shuttle twisted and turned, diving straight down before banking to port and ducking behind an asteroid just slightly larger. Not even a second later, a disruptor shot filled the space where the shuttle was.
“Clean miss,” Daniels said.
“Good, because if they made contact, we’d be in a mess of trouble,” La Forge said. “Integrity holding at ninety-four but the thrusters are heating up a bit more than I’d like.”
“Must be the extra weight,” Daniels said, then looked abashed when he realized Kalita was right next to him.
She gave him a cold smile. “Never discuss a woman’s weight when she’s in the vicinity.”
“Siobhan says the same thing,” he replied with a smirk, then turned his attention to his screens.
“Now what, Commander?” Kalita asked Riker.
Good question. He scanned for the Maquis ship and saw that it was darting from asteroid to asteroid, avoiding exposing too much of itself to the Cardassians. The second ship was now visible and required extra attention. He had two ships to protect, and two ships to avoid or destroy. That latter option seemed more like wishful thinking to him. There were now nearly four dozen lives counting on him, and he needed a brilliant notion, something that would save them all. They didn’t have to name it after him, just note that it worked.
He moved the Anaximenes behind another larger asteroid and then concentrated on the sensor scans of the area. Almost one by one, he studied the asteroids in the vicinity, pausing to quickly check the visual positions of the other three ships in the equation. Then he returned his attention as he felt the time pressure growing, because the Cardassians clearly had the advantage.
Unless they could disappear.
Without a cloaking device, he needed to cover the ships or find someplace the Cardassians couldn’t see, scan, or reach.
That was when he spotted the asteroid some hundreds of kilometers away. It had a wide-mouthed opening with what looked to be a pillar of rock bisecting the entry to what appeared to be a cave. It was at an angle to the shuttle and tough to scan, but he tapped his screen and pointed it out to La Forge. His engineer studied it, checked his own sensor readouts, and slowly nodded.
“All it would take is one shot,” Riker mused.
“What would?” Kalita asked but was ignored.
“That’d create a lot of debris,” La Forge added.
“Could damage either ship trying to get in.”
“Not if we give Pádraig target practice.”
“You never use my first name; that suddenly sounds ominous,” Daniels said.
“Nah, he only sounds ominous when he uses your full name,” La Forge said.
“And only my mother uses that. But I get the idea. How do we keep that from the Cardassians and clue in the Liberté?”
“I’m working on it,” Riker said as his right hand rapidly tapped several controls. He took his last two minutes’ conversation from the ship’s recorder and turned it into a microburst transmission. Targeting the Maquis ship with a tight focus, he activated the communications system, and in less than a second, the message had been sent, too brief, he hoped, to be detected by the Cardassians.
“I’m giving them three minutes to be ready. Mark,” Riker said. “Everyone hold tight, we’re going to be moving quickly on this.”
Those behind him remained quiet, even Tregaar, for which the commander was thankful. He was tired. Five days’ travel in a shuttle would wear on anyone, and now fighting Cardassians just wore away at him further. If this worked, he’d definitely need some rest.
First things first.
As the seconds ticked down, he received no reply from Maass or Malames; then again, he didn’t detect any overt movement from their opponents. Daniels seemed set to do his part, so he just needed to keep the shuttle level and maintain a rate of speed that meant avoiding debris and ensured a smooth landing. He’d taken the time to do a more detailed look at their target and determined there was minimal gravity given the bulk of the dead rock. Its iron/nickel makeup wouldn’t necessarily save them from Cardassian probing, but if they went deep enough, wouldn’t hurt either.
“Ten seconds,” he said. He sensed people shifting, and he imagined the air thick with tension even though the atmospheric monitor indicated all was fine.
As the final seconds ticked down, he engaged the thrusters and began arcing the shuttle toward the asteroid and its inviting cave. Without raising his voice, he instructed Daniels, “Fire.”
The phaser beam was right on target, shattering the pillar of stone that prevented the shuttle from accessing the cavern. As expected, various size and shaped debris floated in all directions, including directly in the Anaximenes’s path. Daniels then targeted and fired a series of smaller bursts, pulverizing the larger pieces that would endanger the shuttle’s hull integrity.
All of which cleared the way for the Liberté to follow. He stole a glance at the tactical screen and was pleased to see the other ship moving into position behind them. So far so good.
A second glance showed the Cardassian ships still farther away, still seemingly clueless to the new game, hide-and-seek. He smiled at La Forge, who cracked a grin back at him, pleased that this ploy seemed to be working.
Within a minute, the firing stopped and Daniels gave Riker the all clear. Visually, the space seemed to confirm that, and his fingers increased the speed so they could get within the now-open asteroid as quickly as was practical. Their meager deflectors nudged aside the smaller rocks, and nothing seemed to endanger the shuttle. The gaping maw of the cave was inviting, and Riker took the shuttle right inside without letting up speed.
The Anaximenes’s lights offered the only real illumination. The cavern walls were ragged; the opening probably carved out by impact with other celestial objects millennia ago. All he could see was stratified rock and more stratified rock in colors ranging from black to dull gray and back again. For now, though, it was a safe haven and that would more than suffice.
The cavern stretched for more than a kilometer, and he took the shuttle toward the very rear and then cut speed, engaging the thrusters to begin lowering them to the uneven surface. Riker activated the levelers that extended from beneath the shuttle, telescoping based on sensor readouts to balance the shuttle so it would be even. They wobbled a bit as minute adjustments were made, but it gave him a chance to breathe and study their diagnostics. Overall integrity nudged down to ninety-two percent, but he could live with that for now. The thruster La Forge fixed seemed just fine.
“Here they come,” La Forge said.
Riker saw on the large view screen that the Liberté was negotiating the space just fine despite its larger shape. Of course, space cruisers were expected to be able to dock at all manner of ports of call, so this was just one of the less luxurious ones. They began to descend about five hundred meters from the shuttle, close enough just in case but with plenty of room if they needed to leave quickly.
With that thought, he once more studied the tactical sensors and saw little; the metallic ores definitely played a little havoc. He wished the Cardassians had similar issues if they neared this cluster. Satisfied, he began powering down systems, leaving the phasers on standby.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” Kalita asked.
“Until I’m certain they’re gone and we can safely leave the system,” Riker said.
“And how are you going to do that if you used your three probes?”
Good question. “I’ve got it covered.” He raised his voice and looked past her to the others. “We’re going to be here for a while. Everyone get something to eat from the replicator and try to rest. Mr. Daniels will be on first watch, so take your issues up with him.”
“Thanks,” Daniels said.
“Rank hath its privileges, Lieutenant,” La Forge said. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll catnap so I can relieve you in a couple of hours.”
After wolfing down some field rations, Riker slumped in the pilot’s chair, closed his eyes, and drifted off into what promised to be an uncomfortable and unfruitful sleep.
While Riker’s breathing evened out, Daniels finished his soup and recycled his bowl. As he retook his seat, which while comfortable proved stiff after long periods in it, Kalita looked his way.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the spare, hard woman. She was passionate and certainly seemed to have her reasons for being with the Maquis, but he wondered when she would realize it was a cause that was doomed to fail.
“You think of me as a terrorist,” she said plainly.
“Not really,” he admitted. “Some of your actions are certainly questionable, but you didn’t blow up the Defiant or the Enterprise. A criminal, I suppose.”
“Huh,” she said. “See, I never thought of my actions as criminal but just under the circumstances. The medical supplies Ro and I stole were for refugees and those harmed by the Cardassian governors.”
“Still, had you asked, I suspect Captain Picard would have provided aid,” Daniels said.
“He couldn’t. It would have violated the treaty with the Cardassians. And from what Ro said, Picard is a very disciplined man.”
“That he is.” While he was still getting used to the man and his command style, he was certainly aware of the man’s legend. When he was offered a post on the Enterprise, he was surprised, figuring the captain had a long list of better-qualified candidates. Then again, he did obtain his first captaincy in the field so was probably more open-minded than other commanders.
“You know what would have made a difference?” Kalita asked, clearly changing gear.
“Tell me.”
“When they began negotiating the treaty, maybe someone should have asked for our input.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Federation and Cardassians sat in their embassies or on some starbase or God knows where and coolly redrew the galactic maps. Did they have any colonist from the affected worlds provide feedback? Did the Federation bother to send ambassadors or emissaries to speak with us and get our opinion?”
“I’m guessing not,” he said, imaging how he would have felt under the circumstances.
“Ro knew what it was like to be betrayed by her own people after the Cardassians occupied Bajor. The things she had to endure, I don’t know how she did it, and then to be betrayed by Starfleet.”
“Wait a second. I don’t know Ro or her story, but Starfleet doesn’t betray its own.” Daniels was suddenly feeling defensive. He was also lying—after all, he’d been the one to find Admiral Eric Hahn’s body, and he died only because Admiral Leyton and his people betrayed him. “Neither of us were there. Now, I do understand your anger at not having a say.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” she said. “You know, once the DMZ was established, the Cardies armed their people to attack the Federation administrators. Did anyone call them on it? Did anyone come out and accuse the Cardies of abusing Federation citizens? Of course not. The treaty was signed, peace was established, and the war was over. There were other things to worry about rather than a strip of space.”
“Your little strip of space was not the only political issue. Those Changelings are out to take over the whole damned quadrant.”
“Our ‘little strip,’ as you call it, was our home! We had people dying and no one seemed to care.”
Daniels patted the air before him and then jerked a thumb at the slumbering Riker and Geordi. She gave them a look and then stared at him, clearly not caring if she raised her voice. Both also stole looks behind them. Of the four Maquis tightly packed in the rear, only one, the Deltan, seemed to be awake and following the discussion. Certainly their voices traveled well enough given the confines.
“So, you think its okay to kill in the name of freedom?” he asked in a quieter tone, hoping to lead by example.
“We were targeting our oppressors so they’d leave our families alone. No one should lose a sister like I did.”
“Allying yourself with the Klingons will save lives?”
Kalita fidgeted with the cup she had finished with long before. She was a walking raw nerve, he decided.
“Sure, we’re getting weapons and ordnance from them to wage a battle that the Federation refuses to acknowledge.”
“You do realize you’re just cannon fodder for them?”
She frowned at him. “I don’t know the phrase.”
“In the old days on Earth, the first lines of troops that rigidly walked onto the battlefield were the first ones knocked down by cannon fire, but that allowed the troops behind them to get closer so they could eventually attack. To the Klingons, you’re there to take down as many Cardassians as possible, softening them so they can make the killing blow and probably claim the union’s territory for themselves.”
“Will it buy us freedom?”
“The Klingon Empire tends to absorb their allies, so I can foresee a day when the DMZ is either part of the empire or the battleground in the next Federation-Klingon war.” He was beginning to sound like one of the professors he had at the Academy, droning on in full lecture mode. Talking with her was certainly enlightening, since he’d never really engaged a Maquis in debate before. In fact, prior to his posting aboard the Enterprise, he’d been at quite a remove from the actual front lines. This gave him an entirely different perspective.
“More will die, then? Do you truly believe that?” Kalita’s eyes softened, and for the first time he saw she was struggling with her life, no doubt brought on by the constant strain. Hard as she appeared, she still had a full range of emotions, and it seemed some were leaking out.
“You’ve lost a lot of people haven’t you?”
“My sister, my friends,” she said, her tone softening for the first time since the debate began. “Since joining the Maquis, I’ve seen colleagues fall. After we were freed from custody, Tamal died just months later. Tom sacrificed himself to buy us our lives and then Tamal goes and dies. Such a tragic waste.”
“You look tired.”
She nodded once. “I don’t think I’ve had a decent night’s sleep in over a year.”
“You could rest now.”
“How can I sleep when the Cardies are right outside?”
“Because they won’t be coming in here.”
“You can guarantee that?”
“I can guarantee the odds are against it, that’s the best I can do,” he said. There was a real conviction in his tone, as he processed and voiced his feelings for the first time. “Just like I can use my experience in the service to tell you that there are way too many unknowns out there to make promises about what happens when the Klingons pick off the Cardassians or the Jem’Hadar really engage us. About the best I can promise is that it’ll be messy and more will die before there’s a break in the action.”
She frowned at him again. “Don’t you mean peace?”
“No, I mean a break. Once we finish with the Dominion, there’s still the broken treaty with the Klingons, plus the Cardassians, the Romulans, and let’s not forget the Orions or Breen—or the Borg.”
“You always this cheerful?”
“I’m a realist. I signed on to serve and to protect and will do that to the best of my ability. It also means I serve with my eyes wide open and hope for the best by preparing for the worst.”
“The worst is going to be that when this break comes, the DMZ will remain intact, isolated, and neglected, still under someone’s boot heel.” With that, she turned and closed her eyes, trying to rest.
Daniels just sat and stared at her, unable to find the words to convince her otherwise.