"We have a sensor contact." E'Maon turns his vulpine face towards me; the Reman intelligence officer is wearing a puzzled frown. "It's not on our pursuit vector...."
"Trilithium signatures?" I ask. I call up the tactical display on my chair console. Saraswati is hurtling through space at high warp speed, in a relatively empty sector of the Beta Quadrant... but E'Maon is right, there is a blip at the edge of sensor range, a blip that looks... distinctly unusual.
"Negative for trilithium," says E'Maon. "But the output from that bogey is... different. I'm not finding an immediate match to anything in the database."
"I think we're going to know what it is soon," Kaxath interrupts from the comms station. "I'm getting a signal - we're being hailed."
I sit up straight on the command chair. "On screen."
The viewscreen flickers, and a nightmare appears on it. I try to project a fierce impression myself, but this - Dead metal-filmed eyes stare from a too-pale face with blackened veins showing through the skin. A crescent of metal plating covers the outer orbit of the right eye, and from it a very prominent neural cable arches round to the back of the head, where I know it plunges into an occipital implant. If it were not for the dusting of stubble on the scalp, one might think this was a fully assimilated Borg drone. The thin, bloodless lips writhe, and a voice speaks.
"Four of Six, independent control adjunct to the Romulan Republic, aboard the dreadnought ARW Zacatzontli," the grating voice says. "Appropriate non-meaningful phatic remarks made in greeting to Commander Heizis."
Four of Six has been disconnected from the Collective, but has retained most of her Borg habits of thought. Of course, when one considers who she used to be - something I know, which others need not - the Borg identity might seem preferable. I bare my teeth. I will not be outdone, when it comes to looking fearsome.
"Four of Six. Greetings. How can we assist you?"
"Drone is not in need of assistance. Drone queries your presence in this patrol sector. Drone was not informed of any mission requiring your attention. Drone is of course not informed of everything. Nonetheless, presence of Khopesh-class warbird travelling in relatively quiet sector suggests unexpected military developments. Drone stands ready to assist."
It seems we are treading on Four's toes... or she is bored with a routine patrol mission and hopes for some action. I have her transponder data, now; the Zacatzontli is a Paradox-class dreadnought, one of those relics from an abortive future timeline deposited in this century by the recent temporal incursions. A highly potent and highly desirable relic, in fact.
One which I can use. "A routine sensor sweep picked up a freighter with trilithium signatures heading into this sector," I say. "I was alerted, because we have reason to believe someone has developed a trilithium weapon - a sun-killer. I am moving in pursuit of this freighter." I smile. "A single freighter would be unlikely to offer resistance to my ship... with yours in support, well...."
"Drone counsels caution when intercepting smugglers of megadeath weapons. They often have armed support for their criminal endeavours. Drone will match her course to yours. Drone believes her ship constitutes armed support in itself."
She is not wrong about that, and her assistance is welcome. "Let us not be obvious, though. Maintain a reasonable separation," I advise her, "and stand ready to offer support if the need arises."
"Drone concurs. Transmitting course data along your subchannels now." And the screen goes blank. Four of Six does not stand on ceremony.
"What of our quarry?" I ask.
"Still on course," says E'Maon. "The warp contrail is faint - I think they are making efforts to mask it - but it is still there."
"Projected destination?"
"None, as yet. Either they intend a course change, or they have a rendezvous plotted with another vessel in deep space. Or both."
I shift uneasily in my command chair. By now, something should have happened. The freighter should have taken some action - moved into an emission nebula, for example, to try and hide its warp contrail, or made a dash for some nearby port, where it could conceal and offload its cargo. Never mind that they do not, necessarily, know we are tracing them... these are normal precautions, precautions I would take.
I contemplate the screen in moody silence. The icon for the Zacatzontli cheers me a little.... Four's ship is tucked into my subspace wake, partly hidden from casual scanning. I am grateful for the offer of help -
I frown. "What was that?"
"What?" asks E'Maon.
"Something on the scan. Bearing three seven mark two, range... perhaps thirteen hundred...." Not even a flash or a flicker, just a brief discontinuity in the readings. E'Maon hunches over his console.
"Reading... nothing there now." He straightens up and looks at me. "Reading not enough there, now. Sensors are blanked out, not even picking up normal background emissions."
"Signal Four on the data subchannel. Go to red alert. Prep the fighters for immediate launch." The alarm siren begins to sound.
Four's face reappears on the main screen. The transmission is harsh, grainy - she must be using heavy encryption. "Dense sensor suppression near to your course vector," she says. "Near certainty of cloaked ships waiting in ambush."
"Yes," I say. "Maintain your separation, conceal yourself as long as you can. We will turn and attack at minimum range."
"Agreed." Four closes the channel again. I watch the screen as we sail into the trap. We know it is there, but walking blithely into it.... My nails rasp on the command chair's armrests. The Saraswati seems to crawl towards the marker on the screen -
And we are there. "Steer two hundred mark zero. Launch fighters. Shields up, all batteries fire as they bear!"
Saraswati swings around in as tight a turn as the vast dreadnought can manage. I can see Four's ship tracking our movements, buying a few more precious seconds of concealment, as the fighters scream out of my launch bays, and ahead of us -
"Elements!" E'Maon's voice, raised in shock.
Orion ships. Heavy ones. Three Marauder battleships clustered around the monstrous bulk of a Warbarge dreadnought, all now spitting out fighters of their own as their stealth fields drop. If I were still commanding my old ship, the Palatine, I would stand no chance. Even as it is, the odds are not in my favour.
Though they are not as bad as they might be. I grin as one Marauder surges forwards at flank speed, curving round, trying to get behind me -
- and the Zacatzontli comes surging out, weapons blazing with exotic energies, Aeon timeships hurtling from her launch bays. The Marauder's shields glimmer in a riot of colours, then explode into nothingness, and flaming gashes open up along the bulbous hull. Four of Six closes in for the kill, blasting remorselessly away -
But there are still three others left for me, and the screen is filled with the tracks of auxiliaries. My fighters are engaging - they are superior, in themselves, but pitifully outnumbered. And beams are stabbing at my shields -
"Uruz flight away," says Kaxath. "Sir, they're using tachyon drones - our shields are down thirty per cent already."
"All batteries to independent fire. Clear those auxiliaries!" But, while we swat the fighters and drones out of the sky, the mother ships have time to fire their disruptor barrages. Sick green beams bite through the Saraswati's weakened shields, to savage our hull. Warning lights speckle my control console, and there is a flash-bang of a transient overload on the bridge.
"Torpedo spread, concentrate on the capital ships!"
Two Marauders and the Warbarge are grouped close together - I dislike using the thalaron armament, but a blast from that could kill or cripple all three. I open that section of the command console - and I curse as I see the flashing amber lights.
"Containment instability in the thalaron room." That must be fixed - and fixed quickly, before the volatile radiation source goes out of control. I glance at the engineering station, where N'aina is feverishly working at damage control. I should not distract her, when I have another resource to hand - however much I dislike it.
I touch another control, and air shimmers into a glow, a glow that resolves itself into a humanoid form.
"Hello! You look like you're trying to - stabilize a runaway thalaron reaction! Would you like to - get some help with that, or - carry on working by yourself?"
I glare at N'aina. "I told you to fix this thing!"
She can spare me a glance. "All the other interfaces were worse!"
I turn back to the emergency engineering hologram. "Fix that thalaron leak! Quickly! And quietly!"
"OK!" And the hologram freezes in place, its subroutines no longer animating the interface, its processing power now devoted to managing the thalaron systems. I have no thalaron armament. I must do without, then.
The first Marauder, pounded unmercifully by Four of Six's chroniton and antiproton weapons, disintegrates in a blaze of white light. The Zacatzontli wheels around, and an evil radiance spills from her pointed snout. Some wide-area disruption effect. I do not recognize it, but I can see what it is doing; pulses of disturbed space-time ripple across the sky, sending the Orion auxiliaries spinning out of control.
My fighters - and Four's timeships - are quick to take advantage, wreaking devastation on the battered Orions. And it buys me a few precious seconds to mark out one Marauder, and -
"All batteries, all tubes, coordinate and fire!"
The full power of Saraswati's armament blazes across space and smashes into the Orion battleship. Its screens fail in an instant, and the space around it fills with a blazing fog of vaporized armour burning in escaping air. The Marauder reels and swings around, trying to put an undamaged shield facing between itself and my weapons.
And then the Saraswati rocks and trembles as the Warbarge unleashes its heaviest barrage yet. The lights on the bridge waver, fail, come back red, and there is a sickening feeling as the gravity plating wavers. Sparks and smoke spit from overloaded conduits. The tactical display dissolves into static for a moment, then comes back, grainy and flickering.
"Hard about!" I must put my own undamaged shields between myself and that barrage, or I am dead. Saraswati's whole structure groans as the ship turns. On the screen, I see the Zacatzontli blasting at the Warbarge with her exotic armaments - it may be enough to save us.
I look over my instruments, assess my resources. We are sadly damaged, but still operational - and we still have the overspill power from the singularity core, building up in the storage capacitors. Time to use that.
"Helm." I sketch out a course on the tactical repeater. "This."
Bi'or is at the helm; she gives me a troubled look, but she is Klingon, she will not protest or disobey. Saraswati groans as the impulse engines go to full power, hurling us directly at the Warbarge.
On the screen, the second Marauder goes up in the brilliant blast of a core breach. "Signal Four," I snarl, "tell her we need to take one of these ships reasonably intact. And reinforce forward shields!"
Though that last command is futile, in the face of the constant blazing fire from the Warbarge. I can feel each shot as it punches deep into the structure of my ship... but I am almost in position, almost close enough -
Now.
I punch the controls, and the stored singularity power is released, blasting out in an explosion of superheated plasma. The Orion fighters and drones around me shatter and burn; the Warbarge's shields flare brilliantly under the impact, and go down, letting the plasma blast wash over the dreadnought's hull.
Saraswati, trailing fire and debris from a dozen hull breaches, swoops over the burning superstructure of the Warbarge.
"Aft arrays! Target their engines and fire!"
Ribbons of burning green light reach out from my aft weapons, clawing at the Orion's engines, burning, tearing deeper -
The visual display whites out. I curse, freely. A second or two later, Saraswati rocks in the wash of expanding gases that is all that remains of the Warbarge. A core breach. I did not even want a core breach -
The last Marauder is turning to flee. Four of Six is chasing it - and then she is veering off, as it, too, dies in a burst of white flame.
The image on the screen vanishes, to be replaced by Four's face. "Drone was targeting their engines," she says. "Drone appreciates the need to gather intelligence. Drone believes others did, too."
"You are right," I say, slowly. "That last one - that was not from your weapons. Scuttling charges. Deliberate core breaches, to make sure none of those ships was captured." I sigh. "Organize search and rescue. Recover any escape pods and surviving enemy auxiliaries. We must find someone to interrogate." But the information that I need, almost certainly, would only be contained in the now-vanished computer cores of the destroyed ships.
"Drone concurs. Drone will also dispatch engineering support teams to your vessel. You need it." And she is gone again. Gone before I could raise any protest.... I look around at my battered bridge. I would raise no protest. I need all the help she can offer.
"Thalaron reaction is locked down!" The engineering hologram did not go offline. A pity.
"Sir," says Bi'or, "if Four of Six had not been there to help -"
"Standard tactical doctrine," I say, "would have been to use a thalaron pulse. A natural reaction, with those big, heavily armoured targets all bunched together. And if I had done so - the thalaron array would have failed, explosively, and we would all be dead." I rise to my feet. "Someone knew. Computer subversion, to set up the leak, and a mercenary task force lying in wait to take us down. There was never a freighter with trilithium weapons. We were set up, from the start." My voice is shaking. "When I find out who did it, their blood will burn. Depend on it."
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