Claws 23

Rrueo

"You should probably go on," says Haught. He is staggering, leaning heavily on me. The damage to that ankle must have been worse than I thought, and every step we take over the uneven ground worsens his condition.

"No," I say, shortly.
  
"Sir -" He swallows. We are both thirsty; the journey is thirsty work. "You can probably reach the steadhold before sundown, if you hurry. I should be all right. The, umm, the servitors, they can't see me as any sort of threat -"

"They might. And there are other hazards. There must be wild animals -"

"Sir, it's like you said to Admiral Shohl. There's no point endangering any more people than we have to." Such was my response to Shohl's offer to send a rescue party. There was no way any rescuers could have found us and returned with us before nightfall - not without orbital scans to pinpoint our position, without vehicles or transporters to carry us. I do not even know if the Tiazans would lend us any more riding beasts -

What has happened to the ships?

Haught's mind is only a little fogged by fatigue and pain; I see a resolution rising in it. "If you lie down and refuse to walk," I say, "Rrueo will pick you up and carry you. Rrueo will probably gag you, too, to stop you complaining."

He sighs. "I keep forgetting you're a telepath."

"Rrueo hardly needs to be, to know you are plotting some quixotic gesture. Now walk, human idiot."

He walks. We are at the foot of a long grassy slope... a few hours ago, our steeds cantered down it and we barely noticed it. Now, it looms like one of the mountains of my homeworld.

"What's it like?" Haught asks.

"To see others' minds? It offers... insights. And it has its uses, and its dangers." I glance sideways at him. "Rrueo is not intruding on your mental privacy, if that is your concern."

"But you could... if you wanted to."

"It would be feasible. Some minds are easier than others - your Admiral Shohl, now, she is no telepath, but she is watchful and wary and introspective - her mind is a fortress, not to be easily breached. Yours - Rrueo has made the comparison - yours is a village. A straighforward, bucolic place. But Rrueo does not pick the locks on the doors of your cottages."

"All right, sir, I believe you." He is silent for a few moments as we toil up the slope. "What about your own mind? How does that look?"

"Rrueo does not know. It may not even be possible, philosophically, for Rrueo to know. To know herself so completely, Rrueo's mind would have to contain a perfect image of itself."

"I think I see. Uh." Another red spike of pain in his mind-tone. The conversation is as much to distract him from his difficulties as anything else. From the pain, and from the fact that we are walking through the deepening scarlet light of sunset.

"We will stop at the top of this hill," I say. "There is no point in wearing ourselves out in futile effort - and, from the summit, we may have some warning of anything approaching."

"We probably won't be able to use our tricorders, sir. Remember what happened to Admiral Shohl's -"

"Rrueo is aware of this."

"Well, then, sir, how will we spot anything? It'll be dark."

"You are forgetting something else about Rrueo, human idiot. Rrueo is Ferasan."

"Oh. Yeah. Cat. Sorry, sir."

We reach the hilltop. The landscape spreads out around us in the gloaming. I can even see lights in the distance, lights that must be those of the steadhold. "The child must have been optimistic about the nearness of the tower," I mutter. Haught sits down on the grass, his face strained, his leg stretched stiffly out in front of him. My whiskers twitch. I can see the steadhold - one mad dash might take me there - but I will not abandon Haught.

I pull out my disruptor, and reluctantly extract the power cell. I toss it away. Perhaps I can retrieve it in the morning, if I am still alive. "Do the same with your phaser," I tell Haught. He complies, reluctantly. He does not wish to disarm himself. Understandable.

"Rrueo wishes she knew if it were safe to build a fire," I mutter.

"Best not risk it, sir," says Haught. "It looks like a mild night, anyway."

Tiaza Zephora's sun is setting. I shade my eyes to look at the western horizon. Stars are already gleaming in the sky... the sun is a sliver of red on the edge of the world, a sliver that shrinks and darkens... and is gone.

"The Tiazans must, sometimes, have travellers benighted in the open," I muse. "The sleeping giant must surely realize this, must make allowances... it would be feared and hated, if it did not..." I do not know if I am convincing Haught. I am certainly not convincing myself.

Movement. On the hillside, beneath us, there is movement. I look, my eyes now adapted to the dark.

They are here.

They are humanoid shapes, but short and squat, dark and vaguely formless; dwarves, wrapped in some sort of robe and cowl which hides their features. There are perhaps half a dozen of them, waddling up the hill towards us. "The servitors are coming," I whisper to Haught. "Remain calm."

"I can't see them, sir." His voice is strained.

"Rrueo sees them. Rrueo will talk to them. Stay calm."

I reach out with my mind, but there is nothing. In the night around me, I can feel the dim self-awarenesses of nocturnal animals, rodents, even night-flying insects with their rudimentary sense of being alive... but from the black figures on the hillside, nothing. It is not the active resistance of a mental shield - it is simply a nothingness, as if these animate forms are no more than some sort of machinery, or even a natural process of the ground itself.

"We mean no harm," I call out to them. "Rrueo's companion is injured and cannot walk without aid. Will you aid us?"

"Sir!" There is sudden urgency in Haught's voice. "Sir, behind you!"

I spin in place, and it is there - another squat monkish figure, barely half a dozen paces from me. How did it get there? Did it just spring unannounced out of the ground? Light gleams from something on its arm -

Haught stumbles to his feet and moves, placing himself between me and the servitor. It moves forward. "Hold on!" Haught yells, his voice high-pitched and desperate. The figure moves -

There is a sound, the sort of sound one might hear in a butcher's shop. Haught gasps and falls, toppling in a foetal position, his mind-tone one white blaze of pain. The servitor's arm - I can clearly see it, now.

From the forearm, two curved and hooked blades extend, nearly a metre long. Claws. Gigantic claws, wet and shining - wet with Harley Haught's blood.

I hiss, and atavistic impulse makes my fur rise on my body, makes my ears fold flat to my head... makes my fingertips tense, and my own claws slide out from their sheaths. I take good care of my claws, they are sharp as needles, reinforced with a polycarbonate varnish - they can score steel -

They are nothing compared to the monstrous natural weapons the servitor boasts.

I hiss again and spring forwards, my hands outstretched. The servitor steps backwards - then, to my astonishment, it turns and flees, waddling over the ground at a surprisingly rapid rate. Atavistic impulses fire within me again - I want to chase down this fleeing thing, to leap on it, to rend it with fangs and claws -

I curb my impulses. I am not an animal, and my companion needs me.

I kneel beside Haught. Blood is welling freely from two rents in his Starfleet uniform. The creature drove its claws deep into the human's midriff, piercing deep into his body. I pull my medkit from my belt pouch. Combat injuries - I have resources to treat combat injuries -

There is the sound of movement about me. I look around.

The other servitors have come up the hill. They fan out, in a semi-circle, around me and the helpless shape of Haught. They have all extended claws from their forearms. But they do not attack.

"Coward creatures!" I scream at them. "You think it fair to stab an injured Federation scientist? Come to Rrueo and face a Ferasan warrior!"

But they do not attack.

I stand there, astride Haught's body, fangs bared, claws extended, yowling my challenge into the still night.

Claws 22

Ronnie

"What the hell are they smoking, down in stellar cartography?" I demand.
  
"My observations match theirs," Saval replies imperturbably. "The planet is not missing - we have been transported, to an indeterminate location in space. I have no navigation beacons on scan, and am unable to locate any of the standard stellar markers... I am attempting to resolve known extra-galactic features now, but as yet I cannot be certain, even, that we are still in the Milky Way galaxy."

"Oh, well, isn't that just peachy? Leo. Get me a line to the Klinks. Maybe they've got some ideas."

"On it, sir." And, very shortly, the green face of R'j Bl'k' appears on my viewer. She looks unhappy. As well she might.

"I suppose," she rasps, "we should consider ourselves fortunate still to be alive. Did you, by any chance, say or do something - ?"

"Oh, don't blame me for everything. You're as bad as the Tiazans and their damn book of prophecy. Listen. Do you have any matches on any star charts for this location?"

"None whatsoever. We are coordinating with the Anar, whose science libraries are more extensive, but I have no especial hopes there."

I sigh. "Leo. Patch us in to the Goroke's data feeds, will you, and set us up to share stellar cartography data? We're going to need as big a picture as we can manage, and the hell with military security."

"I agree," says R'j. "Whatever issues divide us in general - in this particular situation, we must work together."

*/*collective enterprise is always preferable to individual efforts---
eliminate personal conflicts and pool information for the benefit of all---*/*

Frankly, it's almost a relief to hear Two of Twelve sounding so normal. "Setting up channels now, sir," Leo reports. On the screen, R'j turns away, no doubt to rasp her own equivalent of "you, face-ache, on comms, make it happen." I switch off, and gaze moodily at the unknown stars.

No. Moody gazing isn't going to get me anywhere. "Saval. See if you can reconstruct what happened when that gravimetric shear hit us. Surely we can, I dunno, reverse engineer it, or something? If we know what happened -"

"We have sensor logs," Saval says, "and I will review them. Sir, even if it is possible to establish how we were brought - here - it remains possible that we will not have sufficient power or other resources to reverse the process ourselves."

"You're probably right," I say, "but we won't know unless we try, right?"

*/*futile endeavours characteristic of individuals in stress situations---
collective enterprise means individual termination is not to be considered---
the individual ends but the collective continues---*/*

Heard that one before, Two of Twelve, so put a sock in it, will you?

*/*belt up yourself*/*

Oh, God. To distract myself, I turn to Tallasa and ask, "Have we got any information yet on this Oschmann character who's running Buxton's ship?"

"A Cynthia Carlotta Oschmann was demoted after a Prime Directive violation on the planet Sidoneus Zeta," Tallasa replies, "and resigned the service in protest. Age and physical description fits - we don't have detailed records of the incident or the court martial. Normally, I'd request them from central Starfleet files, but -" She glances expressively at the viewscreen.

"Try it anyway. Maybe we'll get a subspace ping back from Starfleet Command. Maybe this whole scene is just a - a holo-emitter image or something like that...."

"Regrettably, sir, no," says Saval in an abstracted sort of way.

"Incoming signal from King Estmere, sir," says Leo.

"OK, put 'em through." The screen changes again, to show the blue face of Tylha's exec. "Commander, umm, Vihl. What's up?"

"Status is nominal, sir. We are linked with your data feeds for analysis of stellar cartography data. But, sir -" Vihl's antennae are waving like flags in the wind. "Sir - we'd like some assurances - that everything possible will be done to recover Vice Admiral Shohl."

"Tylha? Tylha's not the one who's lost. We are. As far as we know, Tylha is sitting there nice and safe on Tiaza Zephora, wherever that is, now."

"Not exactly safe, sir," says Vihl. I look at her, hard, for a moment or two.

"We're going to work out what's happened," I tell her, "we're going to fix it, and we're going to go and get our people back. Now, don't ask me how, right now, because I don't know, but that's what we're going to do. Anything else is not an option. All right?"

"Yes, sir. King Estmere will stand ready to support you.... Thank you, sir." And she cuts the link. I stare at those stars again. Now, what was that about, exactly?

"We still have the standard Starfleet personnel references on file, right?" I ask Tallasa.

"Yes, sir." The ship's database contains millions upon millions of kiloquads of information, most of it stuff no person in their right mind would ever use. Or me, come to think of it. I mutter to myself, more to drown out Two of Twelve's low-volume chuntering than anything else, as I stab commands into my chair's console.

I read for a while, then I think for a while. Then I catch Tallasa's eye, and say, "Conference, Mary Beth."

"Sir?"

"Want a quiet chat," I explain. "In my ready room." I look around. "I do have a ready room, right?"

Tallasa stands up. "Over here, sir."

---

"I should use this place more often," I mutter, settling down behind the desk. "Screen on the console is bigger in here. Personnel records, personnel records...."

"You're worried about this Commander Oschmann?" Tallasa asks.

"No. Well, yes, but no. If you see what I mean. Yes, I'm worried, but not right now. About Oschmann."

"Then what, sir?" Tallasa has her I will humour her patiently and punch something later face on. I find the file on the console.

"Vihl. That's who's bothering me. Listen. You read all that romantic slush about Andorian love pentangles and what-not, right?" Tallasa's antennae twitch alarmingly. "OK, let me try this from another angle. What sex is Commander Vihl?"

"Zhen," Tallasa answers promptly.

"Right, right. And this is obvious to you guys, isn't it? I mean, you wouldn't mix up a chan and a zhen, right?"

"Neither would you. The chan sex is one that corresponds to a male in humans. Yes, the gender roles are, well, pretty clear. We have our share of intersex and transgendered individuals, of course, just like most other species. What's this all about, sir?"

"Take a look at our Commander Anthi Vihl," I say. "Service record." Tallasa leans across the desk and peers at the screen. "So?" she says, after a while.

"Imperial Guard family, military tradition going way back. Joins Starfleet, nothing unusual there... assigned to the frigate USS Hammersmith - hang on." Something just hits me. "Wasn't the Hammersmith the ship D'Kalius blew up with his isolytic beam at Andoria?"

"Yes, it was," says Tallasa.

"Funny Tylha never said anything to me. It was her first command, see? Took over during that big dust-up at Vega Colony. I was there, too... I think half Starfleet was."

"So?"

"So, Anthi Vihl has been Tylha's right-hand... zhen, ever since. Followed her from ship to ship like they were joined at the hip."

"I'm not seeing where this is going, sir," says Tallasa. "Vice Admiral Shohl has a loyal first officer. So what?"

"So nothing," I say, "except look at this. Table of organization for Task Group Hipparchus."

"What?" Tallasa frowns.

"The raid that Tylha led to take back her home planet from the Nausicaans. Gimel Vessaris. She ran the show from her Charal escort, the Spirits of Earth. But look at the other ships in the group. Indra, commanded by Kophil Phohr... Sita, Shrin Izini - whole lot of you guys, right? And there's King Estmere, commanded by Dyssa D'Jheph. So where's Commander Anthi Vihl in all this?"

"Acting as Vice Admiral Shohl's exec, as usual."

"Why? The natural place for her would have been on King Estmere. Makes sense, doesn't it? Have your strongest tactical asset commanded by your most reliable tactical officer, someone who knows the ship inside out? And what Imperial Guard-style military traditionalist would turn down centre seat on a ship like that, on a combat assignment? Unless she had some stronger motivator."

"Wait a moment," says Tallasa. "Are you trying to suggest that Vice Admiral Shohl and Commander Vihl have some sort of - of relationship going on? Besides the professional one?"

"You're the expert in Andorian relationships," I say, "but no, I'm not suggesting that at all. What I am thinking is that Anthi Vihl would very much like there to be one. Tylha's married to her job, and I'd guess she doesn't think of herself in, umm, romantic terms anyway. What with her face being messed up." Tallasa is looking at me very, very coldly now.

"That is undoubtedly one of the most ludicrous ideas you have ever come up with. Sir. If there is any sort of attraction between Vice Admiral Shohl and Commander Vihl, they are both intelligent, sensible people, and they would work it out between them. If there is. And it would be none of your business, sir, one way or the other. Besides, there are any number of reasons an executive officer might stay loyal to her commanding officer."

"Yeah,"I mutter, "yeah, I guess... I've often wondered why you put up with me, in fact."

Tallasa's antennae are thrashing around like anything. She draws herself up to her full height. I didn't think anyone did that outside nineteenth-century novels. "You took me and Jhemyl in," she says, "when everyone else distrusted or despised us. I owe you for that... and, exasperating as you are, sir, you do always try to do the right thing. Both tactically, and ethically. And - well, frankly, sir, you need someone sensible to look after you. Someone who can disabuse you of any crazy notions you might get," she adds tartly.

"Um," I say. Well, I suppose I asked for it. I can't think of anything else to say except. "Yeah, well... fair point."

Tallasa turns around and walks out. At the doorway, she turns back for a moment to say, "Just for the record, though, sir, I absolutely do not want you as the mother of my children." And with that Parthian shot, she leaves.

Motherhood. Between the ravages of time and the ravages of the Borg, that seems about as likely as fatherhood, now. Never mind.

I sit at the desk for a moment, collecting my thoughts. She's the one who knows Andorians, fair enough... but my gut instinct is telling me that Anthi Vihl is in the grip of a strong emotion. Strong enough to affect her judgment, maybe.

I sigh. Good judgment is going to be in short supply around here, what with me being me, and Vihl being in a romantic ferment, and Oschmann being an unknown but dangerous quantity, and R'j being, well, she strikes me as some sort of fanatic, on the whole....

… and we are lost in unknown space, and for all we know there is another horde of hungry Klingon demons coming for us, and Two of Twelve is rattling her chains.

It's at times like this that I start to wonder if the situation can get any worse....

And, right on cue, there is a sharp hissing sound and a brilliant flash of light.

"Well, hello there, Veronika," says Q.

Claws 21

Rrueo

The riding beasts are four-legged creatures with barrel chests, long tapering heads, and legs which look impossibly slender to support our weight. "Like horses," Harley Haught says, and pats the neck of one beast. It responds with a pleased snort.
 
"You are familiar with riding animals, then?" I ask him.

"Used to ride horses when I was growing up in California," Haught replies. He makes odd sounds at his animal, which responds with odd sounds of its own. "These guys don't seem much different."

"The child, Nejje, says the animals are docile. And we will need to move faster than we can on foot, if we are to visit this tower's site and return before nightfall."

Haught looks hard at me. "Why not just do a point-to-point transport?"

"Shohl agrees with Rrueo that the energy surge of a transporter beam might be misinterpreted by the sleeping giant. Have you ever seen a transporter scramble case? Rrueo has, and Rrueo has no wish to become one." The riding beasts seemed like a reasonable compromise. I eye mine doubtfully.

Haught shrugs cheerfully. "Well, OK. Let's get started, then." He pats the beast's neck again and makes reassuring noises, then slips his foot into a stirrup and lifts himself into the saddle. He looks easy and natural; evidently, he has had practice. I follow his example. I have had less practice with riding beasts, but I will not be shown up by this soft Starfleet scientist....

The beasts respond with docility to our urging, and we leave the steadhold at a gentle trot. It is still early in the morning, and the cool clear air is refreshing - taking away some of vestiges of the cloying stench of that black stuff. It is still with me - perhaps not detectable by shallow human senses, but perfectly clear to a Ferasan nose. I will have to bathe, when I return to my ship; bathe, and bathe again....

We set off in an easterly direction, up a gradual rise in the ground, into the low rolling hills. I let my senses expand.... The riding beasts' minds are simple animal things, sentience without thought; Haught's beast is placid and uncomplaining, but the mind-tone of mine is shot through with little speckles and sparkles of unease. It knows, at some dim instinctual level, that it has a predator on its back.

Haught's own mind is - not as simple as the beasts', but not complicated. If Shohl's mind is a fortress, Haught's is... a village; a plain, bucolic place, open and friendly and pastoral. He is not stupid, true, but he is not... sophisticated. There is almost an innocence about him. If I had time, I might bask in that mind-tone, just to refresh myself.

He stops at the summit of one hill, and consults his tricorder. I rein my mount in beside his. "This is kind of interesting," he says. "Look at the route the kid gave us."

I pull out my own scanner and consult the rough map Nejje was able to draw. "So?"

"So," says Haught, "superimpose the pattern of those buried telluric deposits." He touches controls on the tricorder, and a new image appears on the screen. "See? The tower site is at, well, a sort of nexus."

The telluric deposits worm through the ground beneath the steadholding, and through the surrounding countryside - I do not know, yet, how far they extend. "You are right," I say, "that is... interesting. It suggests a possibility to Rrueo."

"Oh?"

"The intermittent existence of this tower might have a mundane explanation. It may retract into the ground, like those plants." I would prefer that, I think. Far better than my original suspicion, that the thing becomes real or unreal at the whim of the sleeping giant.

"Yeah, could be," says Haught. "But we won't know for sure until we get there and take a look." He flicks the reins of his mount, stirring the beast into motion once more. We trot on, down the far side of the hill, and the buildings of the steadholding are finally lost to our view.

We carry on, at a trot, and I note a change in the landscape as we progress. The green vegetation becomes sparse, yellowish, stunted; the soil beneath our mounts' hooves becomes light-coloured, dry and powdery. I call Haught's attention to it. "Yeah," he says. "I think the telluric deposits are... interacting with the local water table. Somehow. Maybe they're something like aquifers themselves, regulating the distribution of the water."

"Directing it away from the uninhabited areas, towards the steadholdings, perhaps?"

"Yeah, could be. There's a definite, well, symbiosis, isn't there? Between the colonists and this - whatever it is?"

"It controls them, and it looks after them. If you call this symbiosis - well, the word is as good as any. But what is in it for the sleeping giant?"

Haught does not answer. Naturally, for there is no answer.

We travel on. We are moving up a steeper slope, the dusty ground crumbling beneath our mounts' hooves, when my communicator beeps. "Rrueo," I answer it.

"Sir." Toriash's voice. "We may have a problem."

"Explain."

"Last scheduled check-in with the Anar elicited no response from the ship. We are unable to contact the Goroke, either. The Starfleet team is attempting to contact its parent vessels - they are not reporting the results to us, naturally, but there are long faces in the Starfleet camp."

"The ships are out of communication? What resources do we have, with which to raise them?"

"Standard local distress beacons only. We could construct a subspace transmitter, but we would have only enough power to reach a few light-hours of range. If the ships are incommunicado - or, worse, lost - then we have a problem."

"Indeed. Calculate their orbits based on last known data, and keep a watch at night - ach! Rrueo was forgetting...." I think hard. "Perhaps, if we make a discreet hole in the roof of the guest lodgings, we can watch for the ships from there."

"I will calculate the requisite placement," says Toriash, "and keep you apprised of all developments."

"Very well. Carry on. Rrueo out."

During this conversation, Haught has drawn ahead of me - perhaps, in his simple way, he does not wish to overhear a private conversation. He will never progress in Starfleet Intelligence with that attitude. I dig my heels into my mount's flanks, urging it onwards, trying to make up the ground -

- and, all of a sudden, the sparks of unease in the animal's mind all run together and flare in a single brilliant mass of panic, and it is bolting, running, twisting and jumping, trying to throw me from the saddle.

I scream a curse, and that only makes matters worse. I catch a glimpse of Haught, ahead of me, reining his mount to a standstill. Then, suddenly, the world dissolves.

Landslip. The prancing of the animal on the loose dry earth has triggered some instability in the ground, and now the hillside itself is sliding away beneath me, exploding into choking dust. The riding beast screams as it loses its footing, and I scream too, abandoning it, leaping from the saddle rather than be crushed beneath it as it falls.

The breath is knocked from my body as I slam into the shifting ground, and I tumble and roll through the choking haze for what seems a very long time. Around me, I hear the rumble of the moving earth, and incoherent shouts from Haught, and the high screaming of animals in fear and pain. Another impact, and I stop rolling. I breathe in dust-choked air, and I choke myself, and cough, and spit, and finally struggle to my feet.

There is still screaming. One of the riding beasts is screaming, lying on the ground, covered in dust, two legs obviously broken, its head thrown back and its eyes rolling as it voices its pain. There is nothing to be done for it. I draw my disruptor, take aim and fire, and the beast's pain ends. Its companion is lying some distance away: lying very, very still. Haught -

Haught is on the ground nearby, and he is still alive, but groaning and coughing and massaging his ankle. I hurry over to him, still coughing and spitting out dust myself. My body feels as though it has been beaten with clubs. Pebbles and trickles of earth are still rolling down the hillside.

Haught blinks at me. "How bad is it?" I ask him.

"Don't think -" He breaks off in a fit of coughing. "Sorry. Don't think it's too bad - think I can stand -" He tries it, rising a little way, then floundering on the uncertain ground. I take his shoulder, support him, raise him to his feet.

"Rrueo will name you human burden, as well as human idiot."

"Sorry, sir," he says, as he gingerly steadies himself.

I sigh. "Do not apologize. This was Rrueo's fault. Rrueo spooked her mount, and that caused all that followed."

Haught winces. "I think it's just a sprain, but I'm having trouble putting my weight on it.... Don't think there's any alternative now, sir." He touches the combadge on his uniform. "Haught to King Estmere. One to beam up."

There is no response. Haught frowns, and touches the badge again. "Haught to King Estmere, respond, please."

"Forget it," I tell him, wearily. I look around. We will need some shelter from the sun, and perhaps I can use the local vegetation to make some support for Haught's ankle....

"Sir?" Haught is puzzled.

"That was the message Rrueo received. We have lost contact with the ships. All the ships."

"What?" Haught takes a tentative step, and stumbles. I catch his arm and prevent him from falling.

"Rrueo thinks there is a stream, over there." I point. "We will need water -"

"Uh," says Haught. "What about - Sir, the ships -"

"There is nothing we can do. Except worry. Rrueo will not waste effort in worry when there is work to be done." I squint at the hills. "We cannot complete our task, so we must return to the steadholding. Perhaps Shohl and the others will have news of the ships there."

"Yeah." Haught takes another tremulous step forwards, wincing with pain as he leans on me. "Uh," he says. "Only, well, sir -"

"Yes?"

He swallows. His face is pale, and not just with pain. "I - I don't know how we're going to make it back before nightfall."

Claws 20

Ronnie

"Which-what, again?" I demand.

"Enantiomers," Tylha repeats with a sigh. I hate it when people use words like that at me before I've had my coffee. Or after, come to that. "The molecule comes in two different versions, and they're mirror images of each other. The processing plant splits them apart. Like taking pairs of gloves, and separating them into a pile of right gloves and a pile of left ones."

"Sounds fascinating." Well, it sounds like a complete waste of time to me, but what do I know? "So what's it all in aid of?"

"That, we don't know, yet. But Nejje says the overlord's tower is nearby, so we're planning to reconnoitre that - once Rrueo's finished cleaning herself up, of course." Oh, I would so like to have seen Buxton get herself gunged. Never mind.

"Waitaminute. A tower? How come we didn't spot it from orbit? How come Juregh didn't, come to that? He was looking for a seat of government, wasn't he?"
  
"I was wondering about that myself," says Tylha. "According to Nejje, it's only there sometimes - which I find just a little bit worrying. Rrueo was muttering something about that making sense, while she was going off to wash herself. That Ferasan knows more than she's telling us, and it's bothering her. I wish I could find some way of getting her to talk."

"Yeah, the Klinks definitely have stuff on their minds. What else do you have going on down there?"

"Rrueo seems to have take a fancy to one of my officers... so I'm going to let him do some legwork with her, while I deal with the detail stuff. This colony's got a history - actually, two histories. A conventional one, and one written in advance by this book of prophecy."

"I hope you can stand the excitement," I say.

"I'll be digging into the engineering of the chemical works, too. But we need to get a handle on these records. We still haven't found anything that matches the glyphs at Duselva WX, for instance. There ought to be something in the written records which gives us some clues...."

"Yeah. Well." I look at the viewscreen, at the enigmatic form of the Chloe in the middle of it. "Clues seem to be in pretty short supply right now."

"You haven't found anything on the derelict?"

"No trace of occupancy at all. Logs are all blank... it's like she came fresh from the shipyard."

Over the link, I hear Tylha sigh. "Keep at it. I'm going to get my teams organized - and talk to Nejje about how to find the tower. Speak to you later. Shohl out."

The comms link goes dead. I lean forward, studying the Chloe intently. It can't be the same ship. I know it can't....

"Sir." Leo Madena's voice. "I've got a subspace signal coming in from the USS Tapiola."

I turn to look at him. "USS Tapiola? Do we know them?... OK, put it through. I don't think I owe them money."

The ship's name is unfamiliar - but the face on the viewer, when it appears, is one I do know; sharp-featured, red-haired and Vulcan. "T'Pia. Yo. What happened? I thought your ship was, what was it, the Kyllikki?"

"Vice Admiral Grau." I love these warm Vulcan greetings. "The Kyllikki is still undergoing repairs to the battle damage sustained in the defence of Andoria." T'Pia's Nebula-class science cruiser took one heck of a pounding from the Hegemony fleet during that particular scrap, fair enough. "I have transferred my flag to the USS Tapiola, and it is aboard this vessel that I and my survey team are following up on a report of yours."

"A report of mine?"

"We are currently in orbit around the planet Duselva WX III."

"Oh. Right. Have you turned up anything interesting at the ruins yet?"

"I believe we have. And I believe our discoveries could be summarized in two words: what ruins?"

It takes a moment for that one to sink in. "Waitaminute. We found, like, a whole continent's worth of ancient arcology there -"

"So your report says. I will admit to a level of perplexity, in that there is no sign of these ruins here now. Nor on any of the other planets in the Duselva WX system - I have sent exploratory probes, in case there was some... error... in the numbering of the planet."

"The ruins are gone?"

"There is no sign that Duselva WX III has ever been inhabited."

"But - but -" I realize I'm starting to sound like a motorbike, and I stop. I gape at T'Pia.

"You have something of a reputation for eccentricity, Vice Admiral Grau," she says, "but I find it hard to believe that you would perpetrate a practical joke of this nature. I am unable, however, to determine any credible explanation for this matter."

"The ruins were there," I say. "I went down and saw them, dammit. We found - hold on." My mind is racing. If the arcology wasn't real, or has dematerialized, or something - what else might not be real? I hit the intercom. "Get me sickbay."

"Zodiri here," a voice answers.

"Seb Moraes's body," I say. "It's still in the stasis tube in the mortuary, right?"

"Well, where else do you expect it to be?" On the screen, I see T'Pia raise an eyebrow at that. Damn it.

"Do me a favour. Check on it."

"What?" Zodiri demands. "Do you think he's got out and gone for a walk or something?"

"Just humour me, will you?" I hear her muttering indistinctly on the other end of the line. "We found a dead body," I explain to T'Pia.

"Yes. It was in your report. I confess, I did not understand that aspect of the situation, either."

"Neither do I. The only thing I can think is, something immensely powerful is playing a game, and the name of the game is silly beggars."

Zodiri's voice comes back. The stroppy Trill sounds fraught. "All right, where is he? And how did you know?"

"My best guess is, he's nowhere. Vanished completely. And it's just a guess, but I guess I'm guessing right."

"You suspect the entity at Tiaza Zephora of having some sort of reality manipulation ability," says T'Pia.

"Even if I'm cracking up and playing practical jokes, my crew aren't. And Tylha Shohl isn't, and she's seen these things too."

T'Pia nods slowly. "If your suspicions are correct, you are in a position of grave danger," she observes.

"Too right. But I don't know how best to get out of it, or even if we can get out of it." Something is bothering me. What is it?

"The entity's reach must extend as far as Duselva WX. I should not subject my survey group to unnecessary hazard."

"Right. Good thinking. Right. Crack out of there, now."

"It is also my judgment that you require all available assistance," T'Pia continues. "I will not endanger the rest of my survey group, but the resources of the Tapiola will be made available to assist you. I will give orders to the other ships of the group to return to Earth Spacedock, while I make best speed to rendezvous with you at Tiaza Zephora."

"Right - no," I say. "Get back to ESD yourself. There's no point you endangering your ship too."

"Your concern is noted, as is your protest. Tapiola will reach your current location in thirty-six hours. T'Pia out." And her face vanishes from the screen, to be replaced by the enigmatic image of the Chloe -

I bite down hard on an oath, and turn to Leo Madena. "Get me a channel to the teams on that ship! And alert the transporter rooms, now!"

"Sir?"

"The ruins vanished! Seb's body vanished! What's to stop that ship going, too, with our people aboard it?"

Leo swallows hard, and his fingers rattle furiously on the console. "Channels open, sir!"

"All teams on the Chloe!" I yell. "Drop everything you're doing and prepare for emergency beam-out! Transporter rooms! Get locks on them, beam them out, and make it fast!"

"Energizing," an anonymous voice reports. I sit back in my command chair, bolt upright, and fret. It's out of my hands now. The Chloe stays on the screen, inactive, seemingly solid enough.... Time passes. It feels like hours. "This is transporter room one," the voice says. "All personnel recovered and accounted for. Sir, what's it all about?"

I take a deep breath, trying to think of a succinct answer -

Then the whole ship lurches beneath me, and a pit opens up in my stomach like I'm trapped in a falling elevator. People are yelling and falling, all around the bridge. I clutch at the arms of the command chair. Why the hell do we not have seatbelts, again?

"Massive gravimetric shear!" Saval shouts from the science console.

"Attempting to compensate." Jhemyl is at the helm, her hands moving with remorseless competence on the controls. "Engaging RCS thrusters and stabilizers. Boosting inertial dampeners to maximum. Sir, the other ships have also been caught in the anomaly. And the Chloe is no longer on my screen, and - sir -" She comes to a full stop. That has to be bad.

But the ship is steadying. I take a look at the tactical display, to assess the situation. Then I wish I hadn't.

"All right," I say. It comes out as a sort of croak. "I'm going to close my eye and count to ten - and if whoever took the planet puts it back in that time... we'll say no more about it...."

Claws 19

Tylha

"I know it can't be the same ship." Ronnie's voice, over the comm link, sounds ragged and strained. "The Chloe was decommissioned, scrapped, after the Romulan War. I know that."

"So - some kind of duplicate, then?" I ask.

"Must be. Must be. We have tech teams aboard now, doing scans, reading logs, all that good stuff. No life signs aboard. No bodies, yet, either...." Ronnie's voice trails off. The strain is obviously telling on her. "Listen, I'll talk to you later. Local dawn's coming up, right? You're allowed outside again? Talk to you once I've got some more facts." She closes the channel with a beep.

I look down the length of the dormitory room. The strain is telling on my people, too. Most of them have managed to achieve some fitful sleep... T'Shomep is still awake, methodically checking the useless scanners in case they become useful again... and Rrueo is awake, crouched on a bed, silent, watchful, and twitchy.
 
Something is bothering that Ferasan.

Zodes Andeteph is awake, too - like me, she doesn't need regular sleep periods. Her blind eyes seem to be turned to the shuttered windows; her antennae are twitching. "I haven't detected any movements outside in... a while, now, sir," she murmurs.

Neither have I. I check my replacement tricorder. The sun should be coming over the horizon... just about now. I walk over to Rrueo. "Sunrise," I say.

"Safe to move?" she replies. "Good. Rrueo was starting to feel restless." She unfolds herself from the bed in a single fluid motion. "Let us see what has happened, then." She strides for the doorway of the building. We have barred that door on the inside with a single baulk of timber; Rrueo lifts it from its place and sets it down, then flings the doors wide.

We step outside into fresh, cool air and watery dawn light. My antennae twitch, and Rrueo's ears fold flat to her head. "That is different," she says.

Yesterday, the khala plants were a mass of green stalks, higher than our heads. Now, the fields are stripped bare, the plants mere stumps protruding a hand's breadth above the deep brown earth. Rrueo lopes forwards, her tricorder in her hand. I follow, warily.

The soil is churned, deeply disturbed. By the footprints, perhaps, of whatever came here? Rrueo kneels on the ground, her eyes intent on her scanning. "Human idiot!" she yells. "Come here!"

Harley Haught, blinking and yawning, stumbles out of the door behind us. "Dr. Haught," I say, "I believe you're wanted."

"I need you to confirm something," says Rrueo. "Scan. And compare those scans with the ones we took yesterday."

Haught has his tricorder out. The sleepy look fades from his face, to be replaced by one of puzzlement. "That's... weird."

"All of a piece with what we have seen before," says Rrueo. "Those plants were not cut down. The stalks have merely - retracted themselves - back down into the underlying tellurium-compound mass." She fingers the top of one stalk. "But the pods, the seed pods or whatever they are, have been taken away. Why? And where?"

Unexpectedly, a voice answers. "The servitors take them to the old building."

We all spin around. The child, Nejje, is sitting perched on a fence beside the field. She looks bright, happy, cheery. She jumps down as we turn to her. "When there is a harvest, they take the pods to the old building. I can show you, if you like."

"That - that would be very kind," I say. "Thank you." She smiles artlessly up at me.

"This way, then!" she says, and skips off. The three of us follow, tricorders in hand.

"It was a good harvest," says Nejje, as she leads us around the corner of the main hall and down a well-trodden dirt track. "I am glad! Another good harvest, and the overlord will let my parents have another child. I would like to have a little brother -"

Rrueo and I exchange shocked glances. There are, to be sure, planets where the pressure of population requires that level of social control - and the people of those planets endure it. But this is a spacious world... and these people are Klingons. Or were.

"Over here!" The building is partly screened from view by a row of trees. It is not like the others - it is cylindrical, weathered metal and concrete, a prefabricated housing module, the sort of thing a colony expedition might use. The old building. It must date from the colonization of Tiaza Zephora.

"Are you sure we are permitted here?" Rrueo asks, as we approach the double doors at one end of the building.

"Oh, yes," says Nejje. "So long as you don't break anything, I suppose. The overlord would be angry if his things got broken. I would think."

"We won't break anything," I assure her. "But we'd like to look."

The doors slide open on well-worn metal tracks. They are not locked. We step inside.

The building is full of equipment - hoppers, vats, a complex tangle of piping and wiring. Rrueo's nose twitches. "Chemical engineering," she says.

I nod. "Maybe if we look around, we can find out what it's for...."

Rrueo's brow is furrowed, her eyes half-closed. "But why? The sleeping giant can manipulate reality, why would it need a chemical engineering plant?"

"What makes you think it can manipulate reality?"

Rrueo says nothing for a moment, and when she speaks, it is not exactly an answer. "Rrueo is thinking aloud.... Let us imagine that the sleeping giant came here, and set itself up as this world's overlord. What is its nature? The telluric masses, underground, they must have some purpose - perhaps some purpose that makes sense as part of the biology of this being. A biological process. And - well, there are taboos about such things, yes? There are aspects of our own biology that we can attend to if we must... but would rather not deal with if some alternative can be found." She takes a step towards the machinery. "Old. Klingon standard, well over two centuries old. The seed pods, the processing, they are some biological process - and the sleeping giant employed the Klingon colonists to handle this part of it."

"We have to keep the machines in good order," Nejje volunteers.

"You're suggesting," I say slowly, "that the entity employs an entire planetary culture just to - to -"

"To wipe its backside," says Rrueo. "Perhaps.... We must find out what this equipment does. You are an engineer, what do you make of it?"

"I'm not a chemical engineer," I mutter, but I start scanning with my tricorder, walking beside the maze of pipes that runs from vat to vat. "Looks like... maybe some sort of fractionation, or distillation, process."

Rrueo is poking around at something, her tricorder buzzing in her hand. "There is something in the works, here," she says. "If Rrueo can get a clear scan -" She reaches into the machinery.

I don't see what she touches, but the effects are immediate. A vent opens in the side of one long tube, and liquid fountains out of it, black and glistening, in a thick spray. It gushes over the Ferasan with pinpoint accuracy.

I jump forward while Rrueo screams and splutters. The stuff is thicker than water, and it smells, a foully sweet, cloying smell. I have only the vaguest picture of the layout of the equipment, but I manage to find a shutoff valve, and twist it, hard. The flood slows to a trickle and stops.

Rrueo stands in a widening puddle of the stuff, black and dripping from head to foot, making noises which might be Ferasan swearing, or might just be inarticulate spitting.

Haught is scanning with his tricorder. "Looks like the tellurium compound," he says. "It's, um - well, it's mildly toxic, but it's got very low bio-availability. So long as you don't swallow any of it -"

"Human idiot!" Rrueo screeches. "Does Rrueo look like she will swallow any of this - this -" The universal translator can't cope with what she calls it. Over to one side, Nejje is doubled over, shaking with laughter. I'm trying hard not to smile myself.

I look around, at the unfamiliar Klingon signage. There are some facilities you have to have, in any chemical works - I find it. "Over there. Hose. Let's get you washed down."

The hose fitting is stiff from disuse, but it turns as I wrench at it, and water shoots out. I aim the jet at Rrueo, and she yowls as the water hits her. I play it up and down her body, washing the black goop away, and eventually she emerges, cursing, spitting and sneezing, her midnight-blue fur soaking wet and bedraggled, drops of water falling from her drooping whiskers. I am trying very hard not to laugh.

Haught is scanning the black stuff as it drifts, lazily, across the floor and into a drain. "Huh," he says. "Now that's kind of interesting...."

I turn off the hose. "What is?"

"This stuff." He holds up his tricorder, taps the image on the screen. "The distorted tellurium compound? The molecule's chiral. Only this stuff... this is homochiral."

"Ah!" says Rrueo. I don't know if something's clicked with her, or if it's just another exclamation of disgust. She wriggles and twitches inside her wet Klingon leathers.

"Chiral compounds?" I look at the machinery. "That does make some sort of sense...."

Chiral molecules exist in two forms, mirror images of each other in shape. But the glop on the floor is homochiral - it only has one form. And that implies -

"This machinery," says Rrueo, "is for processing out one of the chiral isomers. Presumably, this -" she spits "- is the form they did not want. And I can well understand it! - The mirror image molecule... has been taken away."

"That'd make sense," I say. "By the servitors.... But taken away where?"

"Well, don't you know?" says Nejje. She is wiping her eyes, still giggling. "The overlord's tower is only a few kellicams away."

Claws 18

Burlington, Vermont, 2275

Early autumn, and the trees were just beginning to be touched with yellow in among the green. Eloise Hudson stood on the porch for a moment, admiring the view, before she turned and went into the house.

"Martin?"

No answer from her husband. Eloise slipped off her shoes and padded across the carpeted floor into the living room. If he was home, Martin would usually be reading here....

"Martin?"
  
The room was empty. Eloise shrugged. Martin hadn't said he was going out... but perhaps something had come up, over at the college. Or perhaps he was just out for a walk, on this beautiful day. She smiled. Or perhaps he had other plans - it was, after all, their anniversary tomorrow. He might easily be cooking up some sort of surprise. It was like him.

Then she saw the PADD, lying on the settee. Martin didn't leave things like that lying around - he was a careful, neat, man, it was one of the things she liked about him. She picked it up. It activated the moment it felt the touch of her hand, and words glowed on its glassy surface

grau
she did it again
it was grau
im sorry love
cant do anything about it
got to go
grau did it aga

---

The man from the police was calm, kind, and reassuring. Eloise told him what had happened, showed him the PADD, tried very hard to keep the strain from showing in her voice.

"So let's check the obvious things first," he said in a deep, soothing voice. "You've called your husband's workplace? They don't have any answers for you?" He consulted a PADD in his hand.

"I've called the college," said Eloise. "He - he teaches math there. He left, um, after his last class. At the usual time. He didn't seem -"

"Help me out here a moment, will you?" The policeman was frowning. "There's something wrong here, on my records... about your husband's date of birth?"

"Oh," said Eloise. "Oh. No, that's - um - that's probably right. He was in Starfleet, a long time ago. He was caught, caught in some sort of time warp. For more than ninety years." She choked back a hysterical laugh. "Our friends said, they said, such an age difference, we'd never make it work - but we did, we do - it's our anniversary tomorrow -"

The policeman smiled. "Which one?"

"Six. We've been married six years."

"Sounds like you're doing just fine." The policeman was still frowning. "Starfleet... have you been in touch with them? This message -" he pointed to the PADD, still lying on the settee where Eloise had dropped it "- might it mean something to them, maybe?"

"I think -" Eloise's voice caught in her throat. "I think it must do. Grau - when Martin was caught in the time warp - his captain, her name was Veronika Grau. It can only mean her." She shook her head, helplessly. "Martin is - is very bitter. About her. Grau."

"So... it says 'she did it again'. Any idea what this Veronika Grau is doing, now? What she might be up to?"

"She - she stayed with Starfleet." Eloise looked at him pleadingly. "Maybe they'd know. Maybe they can tell us -"

"We'll get forensics up here to do a scan for transporter signatures," the policeman said. "Perhaps Starfleet, you know, beamed him out. Though it's kinda strange they wouldn't warn folks in advance.... But we'll call them."

---

The man from Starfleet was neither reassuring, nor a man: he was a Vulcan, small, neat and dapper in appearance. He did not give his name, and he watched Eloise with calm, appraising eyes.

"Your husband did not attempt to make contact with Captain Grau recently?" he asked.

Eloise shook her head dumbly. "They haven't spoken in years. Martin - Martin blames her, I think. For what happened."

"Captain Grau had command responsibility," the Vulcan observed. "She was cleared of negligence, though, in the matter of the USS Goshawk's misadventure in the Stygmalian Rift. I appreciate, of course, that there must have been emotional accretions concerning the incident."

He didn't sound as if he understood emotions, Eloise thought.

"It is impossible to avoid the inference," he went on, "that your husband has some knowledge of Captain Grau's current activities. This is cause for some concern on numerous levels. It is imperative that your husband's whereabouts should be established, for this reason alone."

"You think - you think Martin's done something to Captain Grau? But how? And why?"

"We do not know. We must consider all possibilities."

"Can't you - can't you talk to Grau, herself? Find out what she's doing - if she's seen Martin, or -" Eloise stopped. She didn't know what Grau might have seen, where her husband might have gone.

The Vulcan paused for a few moments, his eyes calculating, his expression remote. "It is not possible to contact Captain Grau," he said, at length. "The message left - presumably left - by your husband may relate to this. Captain Grau's vessel was assigned, at her own request, to chart and investigate the temporal anomaly known as the Stygmalian Rift. She did not check in at her last scheduled subspace radio contact time, and there is no sign of her vessel on long range scans. It is, therefore, conceivable that the repeated action of which your husband speaks -"

He kept talking, but Eloise no longer heard him. All she felt was an unending sense of horror, at the realization that something out of the void had reached into her life and taken the man she loved... and, as the Vulcan's voice droned on, she knew in her heart that she would never, never understand why.

Claws 17

Ronnie

Red alert, never my favourite way to wake up. I reach the bridge at a breathless run, and leap into the command chair. "What's the situation?" I demand.
  
"The Goroke moved to investigate what they thought was a derelict ship," Tallasa reports, "and got jumped by Fek'lhri." She brings up the tac display. "Reading one Kar'fi class carrier, three K'Norr escorts, two frigate groups and - not sure we can track all the fighters and - and other things."

Tortured Souls, the Klinks call them. Living beings welded, somehow, to a force-field matrix that works like an impulse drive... letting them fly free in space under their own power. Sometimes I wonder what that must feel like... then I reflect on the names, and their attitude, and I guess it can't feel good.

"Awright. We are outnumbered, they are outclassed, let's make the class bit count. Get me the Goroke, and patch in King Estmere and the Anar if you can."

"Already linked to your console, sir," says Leo Madena. Oh, yeah, I was forgetting, he pretty much got the hang of this stuff already. I thumb R'j's icon. "What've we got?"

"Fek'lhri battle group inbound," the */*species 10118*/* rasps back at me. "I assume your executive has already given you the details."

"Right. Right. Fair point. OK, so... do you still have the old Khitomer Accord tac coordination protocols?"

"Naturally. We can interface with your tac network as necessary." She makes a hissing noise. "I am glad you are not prey to any nonsense about 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. The Fek'lhri will happily disabuse you of any such simplistic notion."

"Gotcha. Right. Yeah. Feks are equal opportunities killers... I've met them myself. The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath was hot upon me from deep jaws of death." Go on, Zodiri, place that quote. "So. You want to handle fire coordination, while I do the combat vector plots?" Both the Falcon and the Goroke have command and control routines that can put a decent edge on everyone's system efficiency in battle. Another thing a Fek'lhri */*species designation indeterminate*/* mob can't do....

"Confirmed," rasps R'j. Numbers and vectors are coming alive on my tac display already. The battleship is swinging around, putting some distance between herself and the incoming force, getting closer to the cover of Falcon's and King Estmere's guns. Makes sense - we don't want the Feks to split us up and destroy us in detail.

"Signal from King Estmere, sir." The carrier's comms icon is flashing. I punch it.

Tylha's exec appears on the screen: something Vihl, I think the name is. Another Andorian, anyway. "Sir," she says, "we should beam up Admiral Shohl -"

I take one look at the tac display and decide. "No. We don't have time to arrange a secure transport, and I am not dropping all screens for a standard beam-out while there are Fek dimensional rifts about." Last thing I want is a bunch of Fek sabre-toothed bimbos running wild on my ship, thank you very much.

"Sir -" Vihl looks distinctly mulish.

"You can handle King Estmere, Tylha wouldn't have you as exec if you couldn't. Reminds me." I hit another button. "Anar. We don't have time to recover your CO before the Feks get too close to the planet. Confirm you're combat ready, please."

"This is Commander Oschmann on the Anar." I jump at the sight and sound of her, because she is hard-faced, blonde, and undeniably human */*species 5618*/*. A Moabite renegade, maybe? No time to ask. "Confirm we are ready for battle."

"OK. Set up with our tac nets. We're going to use the superior mobility of the KDF ships to try and funnel the Feks into Falcon's and King Estmere's killing zones." Not that the Fek'lhri */*species designation indeterminate*/* need much encouragement to come charging at us, and will you stop doing that, Two of Twelve?

*/*---reviewing organizational roles
---confirming hierarchical values
---information follows
---you are not the boss of me*/*

I so totally do not need this right now. All right. Follow Doc Zodiri's prescription, Ronnie, self-medicate with adrenaline. "King Estmere, deploy your frigates on our starboard flank. Anar, come about and hit them from the opposite side to the Goroke. We've got minutes at best before they're in transport range of the planet, so let's do this, people, now." I look up at Tallasa. "All tetryon banks and plasma torpedoes, stand ready. Ahead flank speed."

Falcon leaps forward, with King Estmere only a little way behind, spitting out her Mesh Weaver frigates - compact starships in their own right. The Anar scorches off like a scalded cat, her weapons spines swinging round into full offensive configuration. The cloud of demon warships is terrifyingly close now, so close I fancy I can hear the thunder of their drives.

"Incoming fire," Tallasa reports. "Coming from their forward fighter groups... standard Fek antiproton weapons. Shields holding." So far. The Tortured Souls and the S'kul fighters don't pack enough punch, individually, to worry me. It's when we get in among them that things are going to get fraught. "One K'norr coming in fast. Anar is moving to intercept."

"OK. Hold fire until we can make those refracting weapons count." Warning lights glitter on my console as Fek'lhri antiproton bolts claw at our shields. The K'Norrs are dangerous - Rrueo's ship should be able to handle one, but everything will depend on whether we can keep the fighter swarm off her back. I count off the steadily decreasing range in my head. "All right. Close enough. Hit 'em."

Brilliant beams erupt from the Falcon's tetryon banks, stabbing in all directions as our guns fire independently. Tetryon beams suppress energy - including, at high enough frequencies, the binding energies that hold matter together - and these Nukara-designed weapons create local energy imbalances that send secondary tetryon pulses leaping across space to nearby ships. So we fire, and space becomes a glaring web of Cherenkov light, a deadly cat's cradle holding the enemy fighters in its destructive tangle.

"Tricobalt warhead inbound!" Tallasa yells. "Brace for impact!"

Falcon rocks from stem to stern as the missile punches into our forward shield. I swear freely. "All right. I'm not having any more of that. Give 'em the works - invert the weapons stabilizers, and then use the tetryon cascade." The tetryon banks come with a formidably complicated stabilization system that keeps their energy flows regulated - a trick you can do, with the right equipment, is turn this setup inside out, broadcasting a tetryon imbalance into nearby space. "Now!"

Blue energies crackle and leap around us. Tortured Souls, stripped of their force shields and integral drives, spin away to freeze in the emptiness of space; the S'kul fighters simply disintegrate in bursts of foul flame. Beside us, King Estmere is spitting out her own brand of hellfire: Romulan-designed plasma beams, burning into the approaching Fek frigates while her own Mesh Weavers slam thermionic torps into them -

I frown. Something is wrong here.

"Fer'jai frigates swinging round behind us," Tallasa reports.

"Right. Ahepkur, discourage them. Release warp plasma... and drop some web mines."

The sickly light of energised plasma spreads out from our engines, almost concealing the compact units that drop from Falcon's engineering hull. Something is telling me that things are still wrong, somewhere. Caught in the warp plasma, the enemy frigates lurch and roll, their shields sizzling; then suddenly two of them are caught in cages of golden light - modified Tholian web weapons. The web cages don't last long... but when they fail, they implode, violently, cutting and crushing their captives into so much scrap metal. Our aft beam arrays finish them quickly....

Not enough enemy firepower. That's what's wrong. Anar has engaged one K'Norr, her disruptors are smashing it to ruins quite effectively. Goroke is fighting a nasty little battle of her own with the other two... the battleship is holding her own, but -

I hit the comms channel. "The carrier isn't supporting the fighters." The big Kar'fi is out of position, way out, on the fringes of the action. "Either it's being driven by an idiot, or -"

"Or it has another objective," R'j whisper-snarls at us.

"Right. And whatever it wants -"

"We do not want it to have it," says R'j. "The fighters are down. Take these pests from me, and I will deal with the carrier."

She's right - she's closest to the errant Kar'fi. I sketch in a course on the tac console, and Falcon and King Estmere turn. The Anar flares with brilliant green light, finishing her opponent with one savage thrust of her disruptor javelin; the black hull of the K'Norr seems to implode around the impaling green beam for an instant, before flying apart into a million flaming fragments. The Anar writhes in space, switching configuration.

We have one K'Norr in range; I don't even need to give the orders. Tetryon beams lash out, and plasma torpedoes scream out of our launchers. The escort turns away from the Goroke to meet our new threat. R'j has already run its shields down to a tattered remnant, and our tetryon beams bring them down to nothing, letting the million-degree hammerblows of the plasma torps strike home unimpeded. The Fek ship explodes in a cloud of flame; behind it, I can see the goat's-skull shape of the Goroke coming about onto a new heading. The last K'Norr blazes antiproton fire at us, spits out tricobalt missiles with insensate fury. King Estmere's frigates pick off the incoming missiles with pinpoint-sharp tetryon fire, while we burn the escort down with our main beams -

- and suddenly the tac display is clear, except for debris and the carrier. "Come about, heading niner seven mark two," I order. The Goroke is closing on the Kar'fi fast, her Elachi weapons sending scything crescent bolts into the carrier's aft superstructure. The Kar'fi, though, is built to stand punishment. "King Estmere, hold your frigates back for intercepts - Anar, stay with them." The carrier could still launch a fresh wing of fighters - could, and should - I don't know why it hasn't already. Falcon's impulse engine eats up the kilometres as we drive headlong towards it, King Estmere on our flank. The carrier looms, black and red and ominous, in my viewer. Tylha compared the Kar'fi, once, to a cooked lionfish: me, I think it looks like someone tried to put oars on a cathedral. It is ugly. And dangerous.

"Weapons range... now," Tallasa reports.

"Hit it. All banks, all tubes."

The tetryon banks glare with killing light again, and more plasma torps spill from our launchers. King Estmere is firing, too, and I am chagrined to note just how many plasma torps she is spitting out, compared to the Falcon. Of course, Tylha's torpedo crews have had longer to practice... and she has a bigger crew than me anyway.... Excuses, Ronnie, excuses. I resolve to do better.

But we've done enough. Under my tetryon beams and the carrier's withering plasma fire, the Kar'fi's screens go down, and the plasma torps strike home. The entire armoured flank of the Kar'fi suddenly erupts into a white glare of flame and boiling armour, even as the ship's drives fail at last, bludgeoned into wreckage by the Goroke's guns. A few fighters fly from the Kar'fi's launch bays, but too few, too late; the Anar and the waiting frigates gun them down relentlessly and quickly. A dazzling finger of light reaches out from King Estmere - a Romulan hyperflux beam. It probes into the burning entrails of the Kar'fi, and suddenly the light grows a thousand times brighter, and the Fek ship dissolves in the fatal brilliance of a warp core breach.

"No enemy units on sensors," Tallasa reports.

"Scans are clear of Fek'lhri energy signatures and dimensional rifts," says Saval.

"Shields at eighty-five per cent," says Ahepkur. "Structural integrity nominal; damage control parties moving to minor impact damage sites on decks four, thirteen and seventeen. Sickbay reports seventeen casualties, all minor injuries, no fatalities."

"I think we got 'em, then," I say. "Whew. Nice work, boys and girls." At the back of my mind, though, is a nasty little voice saying too easy. Feks are dangerous... they should have taken more of a bite out of us than they did.

"I have something else on sensors," Saval reports. "I think it is the derelict that the Goroke reported, earlier. Now that the Fek'lhri debris is clearing -"

"We can get a look at it. All right. Let's see what the fuss was about... only, slow and careful, right, guys? I'd rather not summon up another lot of Feks." Opening the door to Gre'thor is not on my to-do list, and I don't care what that book of prophecy says.

"Passive scans show... metallic construction," says Saval. "Trying for a visual now." On the screen, a dot expands against the backdrop of stars. "Running profile against main databases," Saval continues. He quirks his eyebrow. "I have a possible configuration match."

"What with?" I demand.

"Cross-referencing historical databases." Saval's eyebrow is staying quirked. "Sir... I have a positive match in Starfleet records... pre-Federation Starfleet."

"What?" I stand up. "Let me see that thing. Magnify."

The shape on the screen blurs, expands, settles back into focus... and my jaw drops.

"Early Earth Starfleet vessel," says Saval imperturbably. "I believe we can read the hull number and nameplate... NX-76. USS Chloe."