“No argument there,” Darrah grated, pulling the ship this way and that. He lacked the skill of his friend, but the threat of imminent death made any man a fast learner. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that the Vandirwas toying with them, bracketing the Bajoran ship with beam-fire, herding them into a kill zone.
“Still,” Syjin said, a laugh in his voice. “This is exciting, isn’t it?” The pilot worked frantically to divert precious energy from non-critical systems to the shields.
“What?” Darrah couldn’t believe his ears.
“We used to play space battles as kids, didn’t we? You and me and Osen, behind that big old kavatree outside the docker dormitories—”
The next bolt that hit them punched through the weakening shields like they were vapor. The disruptor beam sheared off the starboard nacelle entirely and released superheated plasma back into the ship, letting it unfold in a wild, uncontrolled reaction. Seeking the path of least resistance, it cracked up through the hull and touched a power conduit. Systems all over the ship exploded like bombs, including the engineering console. The detonation overpressure punctured Darrah’s eardrums, and in horrifying silence he saw Syjin pinwheel around the cabin to collide with the far bulkhead. The pilot was blown across the room, a ragged doll trailing streamers of blood that coiled away in zero gravity.
He forgot the controls and screamed his friend’s name, floundering after him through the acrid and choking air. Syjin kept drifting away from him, still turning gently, as if he didn’t want Darrah to see his ruined face.
Lights were going out all around him, and suddenly the air felt thick and greasy, hard to push down into his lungs. Darrah kept reaching for his friend, fingers sweeping and missing at the cuff of his blood-soaked jacket. Behind him, a black pack drifted across the cockpit, the mass of the object inside carrying it on an aimless course.
“Confirm motion-kill,” noted Orloc. “Target has lost power. Life support has failed.” He looked up at Dukat. “I can send men aboard, sir, or bring it into the bay.”
“New contact,” said Tunol. “Dropping from warp, closing on intercept vector.”
Dukat shot her an angry look; he was a breath away from giving the final order to fire. “Identify it,” he scowled.
“Federation,” she said, with a lilt of surprise. “A light cruiser.”
“They’re hailing us,” reported a glinn. “Shall I respond?”
“Of course not,” Dukat snapped. “They’ve got no jurisdiction here, no matter how close to their borders they say we are. Starfleet can watch me dispatch this annoyance and then complain to our backs as we return to Bajor.”
“They might attack,” warned Orloc.
“That ship’s not a match for us,” Dukat began, but a look from Tunol brought him up short. “What?” he hissed.
“Three more vessels of the same class approaching. They must have been hiding in the warp signature of the one we detected.” She licked her lips. “Gul, we can’t oppose four—”
“Come about!” he snarled, silencing her, angry that he would be denied the chance to defy Starfleet to its face.
“Orloc! Load a seeker munition into the aft tube and program the Bajoran’s silhouette into the warhead. Fire when ready.”
“Coming about,” Tunol reported. “Course?”
“Bajor.” Dukat spat the word back at her. “Maximum warp. We are done with this fool’s errand.”
From behind him, Orloc called out. “Seeker away and running.”
“They’re taking the bluff,” said Nechayev. “The Cardassians are moving off.”
“Good,” replied Jameson. “If he didn’t, we’d be stuck here going head to head with nothing but sensor phantoms for backup.” It had been the captain’s idea to manipulate Gettysburg’s warp signature to produce a series of echoes; to a cursory scanner sweep, they would seem like a flotilla of identical starships.
“The Bajoran ship’s coming apart at the seams,” reported Gold. “Scanning. I’m reading one life-form on board.”
“The Cardassian ship has ignored all hails—” Muhle started to speak, but T’Vel’s strident tones broke over him.
“Cardassian is firing.” She was clipped and firm. “Seeker missile.”
Jameson shot Nechayev a hard look. They were running at Red Alert status, ready to meet any attack with equal force; the Gettysburg’s crew had crossed swords with the Cardassian Union on more than one occasion. “Are we the target?”
“Negative!” replied Gold. “He’s going to warp, and the seeker’s homing straight in on the Bajoran!”
“Captain,” Nechayev pressed. “We have to get that man out of there.”
He didn’t respond to her. “Lieutenant Gold, are you certain? Are we the seeker’s target?”
“No, sir,” said the officer. “It’s entering terminal phase now, ten seconds to impact. Nine. Eight—”
Jameson nodded to T’Vel, and the Vulcan gave the order. “Lower the shields. Transporter room?”
“Ready, Commander.”Nechayev heard Gwen Jones’s voice on the other end of the intercom.
“Lock on and energize.”
By rights, Jones should have still been in sickbay, but she was going stir-crazy in the starship’s medical center and when the alert condition sounded, she took the opportunity to assist the Gettysburg’s crew at their stations; and besides, it would help if the first face Darrah saw was a familiar one.
Across from her in the transporter room, Lieutenant Commander sh’Sena and a Bolian ensign named Jolev were poised with their phasers drawn, with Nurse Tepper standing nearby with a medical kit. The Andorian, it seemed, was willing to take no chances.
“Transporter room?”T’Vel’s crisp tones cracked over the intercom.
“Ready, Commander.” The technician at the console gave her a thumbs-up sign.
“Lock on and energize.”
“Energizing,” reported the operator, shifting the slider pads on the panel. A human shape accreted in the blue-white halo of the transporter effect, and Jones stifled a gasp as Darrah Mace’s face came into being. His expression was one of pain and shock.
The beaming process concluded, and Darrah collapsed to the floor. Jones rushed to his side, with Tepper at her heels. The nurse popped a hypospray at the Bajoran’s neck, waving a medical tricorder at him.
A strong odor of burnt plastic radiated from the man, and he coughed harshly. He blinked and focused on Jones, gulping down air. “You?” Blood leaked in thin trails from both his ears.
“It’s me,” she confirmed.
He pushed Tepper away, trying to get to his feet, wobbling where he stood. “The pack…” He croaked. “Where’s the pack?”
“I don’t understand,” said Jones, reaching for him.
He didn’t seem to hear a word she was saying. “All in the core,” he muttered, losing his balance. “The core. In the ship. Syjin…”
“The ship’s been destroyed,” said the technician. “We barely yanked him out in time.”
“No,” Darrah gurgled, coughing up thin bile. “Prophets, no! They all died…They all died for it…” He clutched at Jones’s sleeve, flailing. The Bajoran tried to say something else, but his words became a hollow gasp and he buckled.
Tepper snapped her tricorder closed. “He’s badly injured. Beam us directly to sickbay.”
Jones watched the man shimmer and vanish. On her hands where she had touched him there was soot and dark, arterial blood.
Eventually, when the muscles in his legs became rigid with cramp and his lungs felt like they were flooded with acid, Bennek stopped running. He hid in the alleyways, burying himself among the wreckage and the abandoned debris of a city that was tearing itself to pieces.
The fear inside him was a kind of terror he had never encountered before. It was a certainty, a complete and utter awareness of one fact: the entire metropolis was geared to destroy him. Every living being he saw, every figure he encountered, all of them wanted Bennek dead.