Heresy 50

Tylha

"Come about, seven five mark two three! Overcharge the plasma launcher!"

Spirits of Earth rocks and judders as another barrage of phaser fire splashes off her Borg-enhanced shields. The phaser turrets spit defiance back at the Vulcan cruiser, but our main armament is aimed forward, at another target - the hulking shape of a freighter, black against Andoria's snows.

"All cannons rapid fire!"

The spaceframe shudders again as bolts of blue-white fury streak out from our cannons, slamming hard into the freighter's shields, hammering away as we bore straight in. My face is set in a rictus snarl, and I can still taste the burned air of Storm Command in my antennae. The freighter's shields are down -

"Fire torpedo!"

The eldritch bolt of plasma fire streaks out of the launcher; Spirits of Earth turns sharply aside as the torpedo strikes home. One second, the freighter is there - then, it is an eerie auroral shimmer, a field of glowing light in the approximate shape of the freighter - and then it is gone, faded away into the void, and its cargo of death with it.

"Come about, all cannons sustained fire."

The Vulcan cruiser is coming up on us again, phasers blazing. Our cannons roar back, blue-white light piercing the cruiser's shields, tearing that elegant red hull into a tangled mass of jagged, flaming, broken metal. A plasma torpedo hits the Vulcan's drive ring. Shields failing, warp plasma gushing out from ruptured conduits, the cruiser veers off, staggering away to die somewhere in Andoria's rings.

Part of me still wants to believe this isn't happening. That this is some page of history turned into a nightmare, this image of Vulcan and Andorian ships ripping at each other in our planet's skies. But it is real, this nightmare. Space is full of a vast tangled web of ships, weaving trails around and around each other, spitting phaser and plasma fire - The situation is scrambled, confused. The comms channels are full of voices -

Like the Andorian voice shouting, now, "- freighter on approach run in zone three, moving to engage - Infinite protect us! Scimitar decloaking!" The transmission cuts out abruptly.

I curse. "Get me a line on that one!"

"On it," says Anthi tersely. "Range... six five two, bearing one one niner mark three three four." Too close to Andoria's atmosphere... too far for us to reach? Maybe, maybe not.

"Flank speed on that heading. Roll wing cannon platforms."

"I have a visual," Zazaru says. The viewscreen changes, shows the wreckage of a Kumari burning to nothing, the bulk of a freighter moving, the larger bulk of a Scimitar shimmering and fading from view as it cloaks. No other Imperial Guard ships close enough. Nothing to stop that freighter releasing - whatever it's carrying - into Andoria's air. I grit my teeth. Nothing but us.

"I'm not sure we can -" Anthi begins, and F'Hon interrupts her.

"Skipper. All-bands broadcast from that freighter."

He hits the console, and a new voice fills the air.

"- aboard the VSS Sharukh. We are on approach to Andoria, and I realize now that Starfleet's message was correct, and that this action cannot be allowed to continue. I have sealed myself in the engine room and am engaging appropriate measures. Ships in the vicinity are advised to evade the resulting radiation hazard. I repeat. This is Chief Engineer Silan aboard the VSS Sharukh -"

The freighter explodes. First, the eye-hurting flash of a core breach; then, the roiling blue flares of tricobalt explosions, blast after blast turning space into a storm of violent energies. No complex poisons in that freighter's holds, then - just explosives enough to reshape a small continent.

And another good man blows himself to hell. There has already been too much of that today.

"Scimitar has decloaked," Anthi reports. Caught in the fringes of the blast, the Romulan battleship is wallowing with its shields in tatters. "I have a targeting solution."

"Hit it."

Once again, our cannons roar, the kinetic cutting beam lashing out, the plasma launcher spitting its bolts of death towards the Hegemony ship. The Scimitar turns, swiftly for a ship of that bulk, its massive weapons arrays sending a storm of plasma fire that batters my shields, rocks my ship, sets alarms wailing and damage control lights sparkling on the bridge. But my shields hold - just - and the Scimitar's were failing already. The cutting beam carves deep into the armoured hull, gutting it. Bolt after bolt of phaser fire crashes home, blasting the grey-green armour apart, smashing into the Scimitar's interior. Air and flame escape in huge gouts from the rents in the battleship's hull - and suddenly, the enemy is gone, swallowed up in the green-black flash as its singularity core implodes.

"Steer two two seven mark one two. Rotate shield frequencies. Roll replacement wing cannon platforms." The cannon drones didn't survive the Scimitar's plasma barrage. "Where's the next nearest freighter?"

"Scanning," says Zazaru. The space battle is one enormous zone of confusion... but it is a steadily, relentlessly contracting one, as - despite our frenzied efforts - the Hegemony's freighters get closer and closer to Andoria. That last one made it as far as zone three - zone two is the planetary exosphere, and zone one is the ionosphere, where the freighters could release their Pasicide-7 safely, without it degrading in the solar wind... clouds of death that might kill millions when they settle.... "Got some odd readings in the atmosphere, sir," Zazaru says.

"What is it?"

"Metallic objects... and low grade power sources.... Sir, I'm not sure what to make of this." My science officer frowns.

"Patch it through to my tactical display. Let's have a look at it." Another Hegemony weapon?

The tactical display, already confused and overcrowded, flickers as Zazaru transfers the data from the main science console. There are contacts there... all over Andoria... rising into the upper atmosphere. But what are they? My antennae twitch... and I have an idea.

"Computer cross-reference. Check for civilian transponder codes - and tie in Andorian historical databanks while you're at it."

The display flickers again, goes ominously blank for half a second, then comes back with a positive forest of ID tags in the planetary atmosphere. "Shuttles?" says Zazaru, incredulously. "Cargo haulers?"

"And private yachts, and research vessels, and even air trams," I say, "not to mention museum pieces."

"Is that the original IGS Kumari?" Anthi asks.

"No, that ship was destroyed... must be another of the same class. Everything that can fly... they've sent up everything."

Everything with a drive capable of reaching orbit, or even the upper atmosphere, is in Andoria's atmosphere right now. A last-ditch, desperate effort to create a wall of steel in the sky, to block the approaching cargoes of death from the Hegemony. A lump forms in my throat as I look at it.

We will win this fight, I tell myself silently. We will win it, because we must.

And then there comes a shriek from behind me: Klerupiru's voice, almost unrecognizable with emotion. "I've got it!"

Heresy 49

Ronnie

Oh boy. Well, this is one for the memoirs, and no mistake. Or the court martial proceedings. Assuming I live long enough for either.

"Tactical telemetry's coming in now," the comms ensign reports. "Uh, there's a lot of it, sir, but I think we can handle it -"

"Yeah," I say, "yeah. Maybe. Maybe we can wield the whole Imperial Guard like some sort of blunt instrument...."

"The Imperial Guard will do whatever it takes, sir," says Tallasa, with appropriately icy emphasis.

"I never doubted it. La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas."

"Universal translator didn't get that last part, sir."

"It's not important. Never mind." I study the tactical display. There are a whole lot of incoming enemy ships. Vulcan ringed-needles, swoopy Romulan designs... the massive bulks of Scimitars, including the flagship, Valikra's old ship, the Raven's Heart... and other ships, too. Ch'Haras was right, there are more ships here than anybody'd thought were in the Hegemony fleet. So what are all the extras? The answer is obvious as soon as I look... big, heavy, slow-moving... "Freighters," I say aloud.

"Sir?" says Tallasa.

"Freighters. The Hegemony fleet is bringing in a whole flock of freighters. Why? Something tells me they ain't filled with yummy candy. Have we got anything working that will get a sensor scan of some cargo holds?" */*inference---military materiel and equipment---separation of ship classes is inefficient*/* Oh, good. The deep thoughts of Two of Twelve on tactics, strategy and logistics - that stuff never gets old.

"One of the sensor buoys for the outer tactical net is still operational," Saval says. "I believe I can get some readings through that." He frowns over his console. "Resolving.... The imaging is not clear. Some of the freighters, though, are carrying heavy radiation shielding around extremely dense material. Others have a cargo of complex organic molecules -"

"Good enough for me. Tricobalt bombs, and more Pasicide-7." Damn it, who gave that filthy muck a trade name? Did they plan to advertise it? "Damn. Damn. Even one of those, if it gets past the planetary defences - we might not be talking full-on genocide, but it'd still be megadeaths of civilians."

"Sir," says Tallasa. Her face is drawn and grim. "Even with all our tactical data channels maxed out, I'm not sure -"

"That we can coordinate the Imperial Guard well enough to block all those freighters," I finish for her, "and stop the conventional attack from the warships, and deal with those rock-throwing yahoos at the edge of the system." I clutch at my head. "Won't work. Need another approach. Think, Ronnie, think. At night you can hear her brain ticking like a cheap alarm clock. Think." I swivel in my chair, turn to the comms ensign. "Face-ache. Get me a channel to the Messalina."

T'Laihhae's face appears on the main viewer, guarded, impassive, impenetrable. The mass of Hegemony ships is moving closer, now, frighteningly close. Another line of light gleams in space; another missile turned aside by Enfilade. "You were undercover on Vulcan," I say. "Did you get anything from there that could help us? Any idea on what they're hitting Andoria's systems with? Any way we could hit back at them?"

T'Laihhae slowly shakes her dark head. "I was able to glean a certain amount of data," she says, "mostly relating to the Vulcan ships' structure and engines. I do not have their secure computer protocols. All I have, when it comes to communications, is a set of emergency pre-empt codes for intra-fleet address. I don't think putting out a general message on their comms system is likely to help, though."

Something clicks inside my head. "Maybe it will. Set it up."

T'Laihhae frowns, but she says, "Very well." Her hands do something, out of the range of the viewer. The Hegemony fleet is boring in. It's coming in from the opposite side of the planet from Andoria Spacedock, I wouldn't be covered by the space station's weapons even if they were operational. All I have is the Imperial Guard, milling around in low orbit, and the few working defence satellites, which are getting fewer all the time as the Hegemony ships pick them off.

"You'll only have a short time," T'Laihhae says, "before they cancel the pre-empt code... I could use another one, but they are -" a quick flash of smile "- in limited supply. I don't know what you hope to achieve, but... ready when you are."

I take a deep breath. "Put me on."

The viewscreen flickers, shows an abstract holding pattern. "This is Vice Admiral Veronika Grau," I say, "speaking to the officers and crews of the Hegemony ships now approaching Andoria. I'm speaking to you, because I cannot believe that you know what you're doing here. The freighters you're escorting are loaded with genocide materials - poisons and radiation weapons. I do not believe, I refuse to believe, that the Hegemony has found so many Vulcans so lost to logic, so many Romulans so lost to honour, as to participate willingly in a campaign of mass extermination. Whatever you've been told, about your purpose here, it is a lie. Don't let it fool you any longer. Break formation, eject your warp cores, do whatever it takes to get your ships out of this - this obscenity."

"Do not listen to Starfleet's lies!" A voice coming back to me, a voice I know: D'Kalius. "Clear this channel, Grau! You are a rogue and a lunatic, and your lies will not be believed!"

"Scan those freighters!" I yell back. "Scan them, check out the radioactives and the toxins, and then tell me who's a liar and a lunatic! And look at those plasma flashes we've all been seeing on sensors - those are relativistic missiles, aimed at Andoria, deflected by the skin of our teeth! Don't believe me or D'Kalius, use your own eyes!"

The screen flickers and goes blank. T'Laihhae's voice says, "Channel has been blocked."

"Do you think that worked, sir?" asks Tallasa.

"Take a look at that fleet. There can't be that many genocidal fanatics in the Hegemony, even now - my guess is, most of those commanders will have been told some plausible lie, about running relief supplies in against Reman terrorists or some such malarky. Once they know different -"

"Movement in the Hegemony fleet," says Saval. He quirks his eyebrow at me. "I'm showing... warp core and singularity core ejections. Some ships, both Vulcan and Romulan, have altered course... some vessels are even exchanging fire."

I can see it on my tactical display, the tight formation suddenly wavering, losing momentum, icons for weapons fire and explosions speckling the map.... Well, what do you know? An enemy fleet thrown into confusion, ships disabled, all just by using high moral persuasion. Maybe I do belong in Starfleet, after all.

"The freighters are still on course," Tallasa reports, puncturing my mood.

"Well, at least it's a start," I say. "Let's see how D'Kalius copes with having random gaps in his command structure.... But you're right. The guys in the freighters have to know what they're really doing, they have to be the genuine fanatics. We need to break D'Kalius's organization down completely." My mind is racing, neurons misfiring at the speed of light. "If we can turn this into a big hairy furball... our lack of tactical coordination won't matter, if nobody's organized at all. And in a straight one-on-one fight, the deelybopper heads were always better than the Roms. Um. No offence meant."

"None taken, sir," says Tallasa in tones that would make liquid helium shiver.

"Command and control. Think, Ronnie, think." D'Kalius's flagship will handle a lot of the strategic coordination... but the Raven's Heart is a big, obvious target, he won't be fool enough to run his whole tactical net from there. */*distribution of assets obviates necessity to protect single vulnerable points---collective command systems inevitably enjoy superiority over centralized command and control assets*/* - oh, pipe down. Anyway, even the Borg use localized control links, vinculums, to handle the bulk data processing. Where's D'Kalius's vinculum?

Annoyingly, the answer pops into my head as soon as I start thinking in those terms. "There. That D'ridthau." The warbird is squatting fat and happy in the rear-centre of the fleet, in the wrong place to be a rearguard, too far back to be the lead ship of a battle group... just nicely placed to watch the freighters and monitor them on their attack runs.

"Are you sure, sir?" asks Tallasa.

"No. But it makes sense. D'Kalius must have some dedicated tac control, and that ship is the right type and in the right place to do it, and I can't figure what else it might be doing. So if we take that one out, besides all the other confusion that's going on, D'Kalius will lose coordination." I take a deep breath, hold it, let it out slowly. "Face-ache, tell Tylha and the Imperial Guard to stand ready to engage enemy units on an individual basis. We're going to splatter D'Kalius's fleet all over Andorian local space, and then the Andorians can mop them up. Jhemyl, set course, two five mark one seven. Combat speed, weapons and shields to maximum."

A sober silence descends on the bridge. It's one time when I'm very glad of working with so many Klingons and Andorians... they know what this means, and they're not going to make a big deal of it. We have an excellent chance of getting in to the middle of the Hegemony fleet and killing that warbird. Our chances of getting out, though, under the guns of dozens of warbirds and Vulcan cruisers, would have snowballs in hell shaking their heads sorrowfully.

"Course locked; engaging," Jhemyl says. "Weapons ready." The Falcon surges forwards.

"Four minutes to estimated weapons range of the Hegemony ships," says Tallasa. "Five minutes to engagement range with target." We can take their fire for that extra minute. I think.

Annoyingly, I can't come up with an appropriate quotation. Last words of Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant? That's not going to lighten the mood. Sydney Carton? This doesn't feel like a far, far better thing. Admiral Farragut? Oh, come on, way too corny.

*/*dissolution of individual unit is not to be feared---the collective continues---the individual unit remains within the collective consciousness---reconnect---priority---urgent---reconnect---reconnect---reconnect*/*

Oh, now there's a great line to go out on.

"Two minutes," says Tallasa in a dead level voice.

Then Saval yells, "Ships decloaking!"

The warbirds shimmer out of the darkness, hulls gleaming, weapons arrays flaring into ominous life, ribbons of plasma fire reaching out, eye-hurting globes of plasma torpedoes streaking across the sky -

And they're not aimed at me.

"Hard about, three hundred mark two niner two!"

The Falcon breaks off her attack run, heeling sharply to the side - because our target is already haloed in flame, the beams of half a dozen dark-gleaming Mogais tearing down its shields, scarring and melting the armoured hull -

"Sir," the comms ensign reports in bewildered tones, "I have a signal - ship's identification is the Zdenia -"

"Put him through!" The main viewer changes. "Obisek, I could kiss you!"

"Perhaps later," the Reman leader says. "We received Vice Admiral T'Laihhae's transmissions and mobilized as quickly as we could. D'Tan has assembled a Republic task force, but it is taking him time to get diplomatic clearances to move a war fleet into the Federation heartland." The scarred nightmare face moves in a smile. "Fortunately, I am neither expected nor required to be diplomatic. Incidentally, my forces engaged with a squadron at the outskirts of the system, who seemed to be engaged in launching relativistic projectiles. You should waste no time in looking for survivors from that force."

I thought there hadn't been any lines of plasma on the screens for a bit. "Got to love a man with a big ambiguity," I say. "Those freighters. They're loaded with megadeath weapons, and if any of them get to the planet, it's going to be a disaster. It's like they say in an old Earth epic... gotta catch 'em all."

Obisek grunts. "We will do our best... but this situation presents difficulties." He glances to one side. "Breaking communication. I have company - and so, I think, do you."

One look at my tactical display tells me he's right. A Vulcan cruiser is coming at me, weapons hot, the needle point of that graceful hull aimed at my heart... ahh, not quite. He's slewing around to present his energy broadside to me, aiming to knock my shields down to nothing before swinging back to fire a torpedo salvo into my unprotected hull. Textbook stuff.

I snap out orders, and the Falcon turns and lunges, facing the Vulcan and passing over its prow, so close that the two ships' shields brush together and flicker. Warp plasma sprays from our nacelles, shrouding the Vulcan in energy-charged fog, tearing relentlessly at its shields. Our aft weapons arrays spit phaser beams and torpedoes into the cloud... and, by the time we swing around, there's very little left of the cruiser for our fore weapons to lock on to.

Don't ever textbook-stuff me, Vulcans.

I spare a look for the overall state of the battlefield. So far, it's going to - what would be a plan, if I'd had a plan. The Hegemony fleet has come completely apart, scattered by defections in its ranks, by the loss of the control ship, by the sudden onslaught of the Remans. The Remans themselves are circling like vultures, their warbirds slipping in and out of cloak... the Andorian ships are rising from low orbit, phasers blazing, hungry for kills.

Andoria local space is now the scene of what might be the biggest, worst organized, starship dogfight in history. Neither D'Kalius nor I has even a hope of controlling it.

"I have a targeting solution on a freighter," Jhemyl says, her normally calm voice edged with fury.

"Let's hit it."

The phaser arrays blaze into life, torpedoes roar out of the tubes. Our beams rake along the freighter's hull, slicing into the cargo pods. Ghostly white mist spills from the ruptured containers: Pasicide-7, spraying harmlessly into space, to be degraded and destroyed in Procyon's solar wind. Torpedoes slam home, and the freighter is an eye-searing flash and a fading memory. One down. How many to go?

"Incoming transmission," the comms ensign reports. "Starfleet frequency... USS Kyllikki."

Nothing's coming our way for the moment. "Steer three seven five mark three six two," I snap, and then, "All right, let's have it. On screen."

The viewer flickers, and displays a face I don't know; a sharp-featured Vulcan woman with short reddish hair. "This is Vice Admiral T'Pia, commanding Stellar Survey Group 274, aboard the USS Kyllikki," she says. "I have one Nebula-class, one Intrepid-class and three frigate groups. We are here to assist."

"Veronika Grau, USS Falcon. We've got to stop those freighters you can see from getting to Andoria."

"Noted." T'Pia frowns. "You are in combat with Romulan warbirds. My science vessels have the ability to set up a tachyon detection grid. This would neutralize the Romulans' advantage in cloaking, which might be a more productive use of my resources than sending them directly into combat."

Well, she's talking sense. But then I wouldn't expect anything else of a Vulcan... except... Vulcans haven't been doing what we expect, lately.

I look her hard in the eye. Her eyes are green, and very hard. "Why are you here?" I ask.

"I received an all-points broadcast transmitted by Vice Admiral Shohl. I have worked with her on a previous occasion, and I do not believe her to be an alarmist." The green eyes flicker for a moment. "I believe Vice Admiral Shohl can vouch for me, if needed."

I have to ask. "You're a Vulcan. Can I trust you?"

Vulcan eyes. It's like watching a slot machine, as the thoughts whir behind them and settle into a result, thump-thump-thump. "I understand your position. Unfortunately, Captain M'eioi of the Trinidad has neither the experience nor the onboard computer capacity to manage a tachyon detection grid. I can offer you this facility, Vice Admiral Grau. Whether or not you can trust me... is a decision that only you can make."

Heresy 48

Tylha

I stagger back to my feet, my ears ringing - I don't know how much is the wailing of alarms, and how much is just coming from inside my head. The air tastes hot and burnt in my antennae. The corridor is a vision out of nightmare, the lights flickering, dark oily smoke seeping from a dozen cracks, sparks spitting from a ruptured substation console -

My communicator chirps at me. "Grau to Shohl. Grau to Shohl. Tylha, come in, will you?"

I take a deep breath of the hot smoky air. Technically, I've been closer than this to thermonuclear explosions, but it's always been with deflector shields in the way.

"Shohl here," I said.

"Thank God for that. Though we'd lost you for a minute there, kiddo."

"What's the situation?" I look around. I can't see the second tech. I can't see much, the smoke is getting worse.

"Big bang under the dome. Temperature and radiation high enough to clean out all the muck, but there's still trouble on the way -"

"We can handle a little radioactive fallout," I say.

"Yeah, if you live that long. A whole lot of stuff's been happening. First thing is, get out of there, the atmosphere down there is bad for your health. The inhibitor field is down."

"I'll contact Spirits of Earth - wait." I try to think. "If the field's down - that means those drones must be out of action." I look down the corridor. I was sure I'd seen one of the damned things - There is a lump, on the floor, about thirty metres ahead. It might be one... I head for it.

"Yeah, well, that's the good news, Tylha," Ronnie's voice carries on, "but there's plenty of bad."

"Tell me." The lump is, indeed, one of the drones. I pick up my pace, hurrying towards it. Transporter inhibitors, weapons, self-replication gear... whoever designed it packed all that in, but had to skimp on the electronic hardening needed to withstand the EMP from the nuclear explosion. One stroke of luck. I kneel down by the drone, check with my tricorder. It's dead. For good measure, I yank its power supply, so it's definitely dead.

"My guess," Ronnie carries on, "is that you hit some kind of computer tripwire, probably when you scanned that toxin from the console. It triggered some sort of polymorphic computer worm, which has got right through Andoria's data networks. Cascade failures damn near everywhere. Most of the planetary defence grid is down, and the bits that aren't are hanging on by the skin of their teeth."

"OK." I pick up the wrecked drone, cradle it in one arm while I slap my combadge with my free hand. "Shohl to Spirits of Earth."

"Good to hear you, skipper," says F'hon's voice.

"I need transport, fast. And get Klerupiru to meet me in the transporter room." The Ferengi data-warfare expert just might be able to salvage something useful from the drone's memory chips. "Can you get a transporter lock?"

"There's a lot of interference still, sir. We'll need to get in a bit closer. Five, maybe ten minutes."

"OK." I look around, and cough as the smoke thickens. "Make it five if you can, but don't take any risks."

"Tylha." Ronnie's voice on the wrist com, sounding hard and urgent. "Bad news. Also good news, I guess - but mostly bad."

"Let's hear it." I cough again, discreetly. Storm Command is going to have to be rebuilt completely, I think.

"There's movement at the edge of the system. How much, I'm not sure, because the data network is so badly scrambled... but it can't not be a Hegemony fleet. In force. And - hang on." A pause. "I'm now tracking two high-energy radiating plasma flares, travelling at a hair under lightspeed and aimed slightly away from Andoria itself."

It takes me a moment to realize the implications. "C-fractional strikes?"

"That's the one piece of good news," says Ronnie. "The data worm hasn't got through to your Enfilade network, and that defence system actually works. Someone at the fringe of the system is pegging ice asteroids at Andoria, hard, and Enfilade is picking them off as they come in. For the moment. If one of those things hits, though, it's gonna be game over."

"As soon as the Hegemony forces realize we've got a defence, they'll start working out some way around it. We don't have a lot of time."

"You said it. Imperial Guard is mustering all available ships in Andoria orbit now. I'm guessing they'll want our help."

"Anything we can give -" I'm interrupted by the blue-white glare of the transporter beam. Spirits of Earth is moving fast. I step off the pad, and thrust the drone at Klerupiru. "See what you can get from that," I order her.

"What is it?"

"Transporter inhibitor drone. Hegemony design. Check its memory and its command interfaces." Samantha Beresford is coming at me with a medical tricorder and a grim look. I ignore her and head for the bridge. Behind me, I hear Klerupiru muttering something about not being a miracle worker.

The bridge is already at battle alert. I drop into the command chair and start to take stock. "Marshal ch'Haras is on general address in two minutes, sir," Anthi Vihl reports crisply.

"OK. We have an assigned position with the Imperial Guard fleet, I take it? Get us into it."

"Already on our way, sir." Anthi never misses a trick. Klerupiru, still muttering, settles herself into an auxiliary science station, and starts scanning the drone.

"Ships on approach vector," Zazaru reports from main science. "A lot of ships, sir."

The approaching Hegemony force shows as an ominous compact mass at the edge of my tactical display. To one side, there is a brilliant line of light - another mass of ice, thrown at near lightspeed, intercepted and blasted into plasma by the Enfilade satellites. They're still working. The fragmentary bursts of noise from the orbital defences, though, suggests that nothing else is.

But our fleet is there. The Andorian Imperial Guard, in force and at battle readiness, wing after wing of Kumari, Charal and Khyzon-class vessels, the main force gathering around the flagship now. The supercarrier IGV Krotus, four times the length and three times the beam of my ship, quad phaser cannons on both sets of wings, a spinal phaser lance, omnidirectional beam arrays, three full-size hangar bays and MACO standard resilient shielding... the flagship is a fleet in itself.

And now, the main viewscreen flashes, and Marshal ch'Haras speaks from its bridge.

"All ships," he says in unhurried, businesslike tones. "We can confirm that Andoria is under attack, and we're at full invasion alert. The relativistic strikes prove that the Hegemony will stop at nothing, and our estimate is that their entire fleet is in-system already. It's even bigger than our estimates thought it would be. But they're up against the Imperial Guard today, and I know you people will prove that that's the finest fighting force in space. They've given us some technical problems, but that is all they're going to do. We're about to engage their fleet, and when we do, we'll kick them so hard, the pieces will fly back to Vulcan without needing warp drive." He glances down. "So much for the pep talk - you people don't need it anyway. Engage under defence plan Daleth, all units to assigned stations. Coordinate your tac nets with flag central command. Engaging full tactical command mode now."

And the screen goes abruptly blank. I stare in bemusement for a second, before my eyes turn to the tactical display. The dot marking the Krotus is gone, replaced by a gradually swelling, red-flashing globe... the icon for a warp core explosion.

A voice sounds across the communicator. "This is Vice Marshal zh'Threv! The flagship is down, I repeat, the flagship is down! I am assuming tactical command -"

And she falls silent, and another dot on the tactical display swells and is gone.

I curse, and slam at the panel, setting up a broadcast of my own. "All Imperial Guard ships! This is Vice Admiral Shohl of Starfleet! The Hegemony have logic-bombed your computers! Do not attempt to assume tactical control - you'll lose antimatter confinement if you do!" I look at F'hon. "We should have Imperial Guard combat libraries on file -"

"Sir." Anthi's voice and face are stricken. "Sir - when we entered Andoria local space - I accepted and approved a routine update package on our control software from Andoria Spacedock."

I gaze at her in mute horror. So, Spirits of Earth's computers could be infected too....

The sick silence on the bridge is broken by Klerupiru. "Well," she says in conversational tones, "it's another datum point to work with, anyway." She tugs fretfully at her collar for a moment, before turning her attention back to her console.

I slump, defeated, in my command chair. Without tactical coordination... without computer control to compensate for light-speed lag, to update out ships on the rapidly-changing events of a space battlefield... the Imperial Guard, no matter how superbly trained, how desperately motivated, is nothing more than a rabble. One that the approaching Hegemony ships will brush aside with ease -

"Wait a minute," I say. "We've got one resource left."

"Sir?" says Anthi blankly.

"Two, actually, but we can't use the Messalina. But the Imperial Guard can use Starfleet protocols... and the Falcon wouldn't have updated with Andorian control software, even if Ronnie Grau was as conscientious as you are. All ships," I thumb the comms panel again, "coordinate tactical control on Starfleet data transmission protocols, and run them through the USS Falcon's command net."

On the private channel, Ronnie's voice is suddenly fraught. "Hold on a sec," she says, "hold on. You're giving me control of the defence of Andoria?"

"Looks like you're the only one who can do it." I lean forward in my command chair, without adding the unspoken rider: don't mess it up.

Heresy 47

By now, ch'Tholas felt quite calm. He finished opening the valves on the last of the radial pneumo-car tubes, then walked unhurriedly to the hatch in the floor.

"Transporters are still blocked, and I don't believe you have time to reach the rest of the inhibitors before the poison reaches the jet streams. That leaves only one alternative."

He opened the hatch and clambered down into the last pneumo-car. The hatch clanged shut above him with a solid, final sound. He strapped himself in. The vertical pneumo-car began its downwards journey simply by dropping, straight down the central shaft. Compression of the air inside the tube slowed it as it approached the bottom. It was an efficient, if alarming, design.

"I hope you can hear me. I can't hear you, my communicator is set to broadcast only. I... don't want any arguments."

He touched the controls, and his stomach lurched as the pneumo-car began its free-fall descent. The swirling white mists rose up to receive him, visible only as a blur as the car rushed down the transparent aluminium tube. Shohl would argue, of course, he thought. If he let her. And it would be all too easy for her to change his mind. After all, wasn't... this sort of thing... why they had the military? So that steely-eyed, grim-faced people in uniforms could do this, instead of him?

"The only thing we can do now, as you've already realized, is detonate some kind of explosion inside the dome. And the only way we can do that.... The vortex generators, the force fields and the controls - they are all powered by a fusion generator. It is, in fact, the impulse engine from a decommissioned Federation starship."

Weight was beginning to return as the pneumo-car's descent slowed. So soon?

"It was manufactured on Earth, and it was a human conceit, at the time, to engrave on the base plate of any fusion reactor... its explosive equivalent, if it were to detonate on overload. The figure for this model is ninety-six kilotons. That should be adequate for our purposes."

The pneumo-car settled into its docking cradle with a thump that ch'Tholas felt in his bones. So soon? he thought again. Reluctantly, slowly, he unstrapped himself from his seat.

"By now, of course, you will have worked out why this proposed solution... contravenes Storm Command's health and safety policy. Please, don't do anything quixotic like trying to reach Central Overwatch. I've bled the air pressure from the pneumo-car tubes, so you won't be able to use them. Oh, it can be restored... eventually. I suspect, though, that the entire facility will have to be substantially rebuilt, once I've... finished."

Lights flickered into life in the darkened control room as he entered. The bulk of the impulse reactor was a black, massive, brooding thing, overshadowing him as he stood there.

"We put in safety features no one else knows about," he said, as he searched for the emergency toolkit. He found it, opened the casing. A prybar, a heavy spanner, a long sturdy screwdriver. Those would do. "I, and the other engineers here on staff, know where to find them, how to disable them. I suppose I could tell you how to do it, Vice Admiral, but, again... there's no time."

He made his way behind the reactor, to the vast hissing tangle of the deuterium and coolant feeds. He found the first of the inspection hatches, opened it. His hands were trembling, but they were steady enough to thrust the prybar between the spokes of the cutoff valve wheel. He tugged experimentally at it. It was seated firmly.

"I hope you're listening. I find it... something of a comfort. To know there's someone out there who can hear me, and who won't talk back. Some human religions make a ritual out of it, I heard once. One confesses all one's sins to a patient listener. " He laughed. "I don't intend to bore you with my sins, don't worry. I'm not sure I have any worth troubling you with. Except overconfidence, perhaps."

The second inspection cover was in a darkened corner, difficult to reach. The long screwdriver was long enough, but it slipped and fell at his first attempt. He picked it up off the floor, took a deep breath to control the shaking, drove the tool home. This time, it held.

"I won't bore you, either, with the conventional stuff. My bondmates know I'm doing this for them, and for our children." His voice hardened. "And to let our enemies know what they're facing. If a middle-aged civilian engineer and bureaucrat will go this far... what will the actual military do to them? Be sure to give them a good answer to that question, Vice Admiral."

He opened the last cover. The spanner was awkward to handle, barely clearing the spokes of the shutoff wheel... but it went through, and it held. It held. Nothing for it, now, he thought, but the last steps.

"We put emergency shutoff valves into the deuterium feeds, at random spots, not shown on the schematics. I've just jammed the last of them. There will be an exceptionally big bang shortly, so be prepared."

He made his way back to the reactor's controls. His hands, somehow, had stopped shaking. They were quick and steady as he cut out the safety circuits, opened the fuel feed to maximum, and closed down the cooling system. The reactor seemed to tremble, slightly, like a huge animal under an unexpected goad.

"Electronic systems are now all subverted, and the overload is building. I'm sure I'm not as good as a Vulcan computer saboteur, but I'm good enough." He turned. "Of course, there are mechanical failsafes and safety interlocks as well...."

Red lights were flashing on the control console, and a warning buzzer sounded. He shut it off. From behind the reactor, a dim irregular clanging sound began. Sensors, triggering servo mechanisms, trying to turn those jammed shutoff valves. The valve wheels were beating themselves against the obstructions he'd placed, repetitive and tireless. As a death knell, he thought, it lacked something.

He knelt before an inspection cover, opened it, reached in, and yanked out a handful of hydraulic lines. Black oil spurted out across the floor. The buzzer sounded again, louder and more urgent.

One last step. "There is a final mechanical interlock which short-circuits the fusion initiator when the reactor temperature becomes critical. Again, it's not on the original schematics." He opened the last hatch, wormed his way inside, looked up at the gleaming metal bar. "I suppose we could rig some sort of mechanism to stop it... but there's no time. Again. It's academic, now, anyway. With transporters down, there is no way I could reach the minimum safe distance."  

The metal bar dropped, descending swiftly and accurately - then stopped, as it crashed with agonizing force into his chest. It ground against his body for a second, then withdrew upwards, then crashed down again. He gasped.

"It's - really quite effective," he managed to say. "If the motor was only a little more powerful, it would be strong enough to prevent -"

Heresy 46

Tylha

"Vice Admiral sh'Shohl," the short, fussy-looking civilian greets me as I step out of the pneumo-car.

"Just Shohl," I mutter. I've never been one for this fad of decorating names with extraneous particles.

He smiles at me a bit uncertainly. "I am Technical Director Thyr'Usarien ch'Tholas," he says. Well, I suppose it takes all sorts. "I have been deputized to set your mind at ease regarding the security arrangements."

"Thank you," I say. Behind me, the door to the pneumo-car hisses shut. The bullet-shaped vehicles travel in pressurized tubes, all the way around Storm Command. This one took me from the reception centre - which had a satisfying number of watchful armed guards - all the way up the side of the old mountain, and then under the curving dome, to... this place.

"Central Overwatch," ch'Tholas tells me, "is, as its name implies, the monitoring station at the centre of Storm Command. Of course, most of our monitoring is done via remote sensors, but we like to have visual confirmation, sometimes... I hope the transparent flooring doesn't disconcert you."

"Only a little," I say, trying not to look down. The Central Overwatch station hangs like a giant chandelier from the underside of the duranium dome, pneumo-car tubes stretching out from it, six spaced evenly around its rim, and one more in the exact centre going down - down, down, down....

"How high up are we?" I ask, and ch'Tholas chuckles.

"The floor of the crater is... about six kilometres beneath us. Of course, if you fell, you would never reach it... beneath us is a series of hypercompressed convection vortices. Essentially, miniature hurricanes, which feed into the main vortex generators at the rim of the dome... their contents, ultimately, being released through the vents at the rim of the facility, to travel upwards and modify the planetary jet streams."

"So, if I fell... that's what would happen to me?"

"You would ultimately fall as snow over some wide area of our planet. I think it's rather poetic, in a way." He leads me across the transparent floor to one of the consoles that are spaced evenly about this single large room. Poetic?

"The cells are largely self-perpetuating, but there is a modicum of control - mainly from force-field generators and tractor beams. The actual floor of the facility is a zone of relative calm - it's where we have most of the heavy machinery mounted, including the primary generator. Central Overwatch is here just to... watch." Ch'Tholas sits down in front of a console. "Now, then. Security."

I can't help myself: I look down. Beneath my feet, transparent aluminium - and, beneath that, nothing but a churning mass of white mists, lit from beneath and the sides, where the vents are spaced around the huge protective dome. The mists swirl endlessly, and I seem to see patterns in them, patterns ever-changing, shifting constantly from one half-glimpse of intricate symmetry to another.... Ch'Tholas is saying something.

"I'm sorry?"

He laughs. "It gets most of us that way, at first! The patterns are fractal in complexity, and quite hypnotic. - I was saying; reports come in here from the eighteen defensive towers in the outer ring... you will have seen those, I think."

A ring of modern developments now surrounds the base of the mountain, a technological city incorporating laboratories, more modern weather control systems - and the defense installations ch'Tholas is talking about. "They look suitably formidable," I say. I glance upwards. "And the shield dome...."

"Is not just for show, I do assure you. It has a practical purpose besides protection - it encloses the facility so the upper layers of our vortices do not mix with the outer atmosphere. We pride ourselves that nothing happens to Andoria's air unless we plan it."

Ch'Tholas seems completely unconcerned by the churning void beneath us. I suppose he must be used to it - I suppose it's possible to get used to anything, given time. Still, I can't help but notice Central Overwatch is nearly deserted - just me, ch'Tholas, and a couple of technicians at another console.

"In a way," ch'Tholas says, "it's unfortunate that you picked today for your visit. The vortex cells beneath us are fully loaded with nucleogenic particles - a heavy snowfall is planned for Andoria as a whole over the next week. Normally, one could look down and see so much more of the facility."

I look down. Then I look back up, quickly. "All that white mist is... snow?"

"Not exactly. Nucleogenic particles, to seed the upper atmosphere and create snow clouds." Ch'Tholas sounds smug. "Synthesized inside the facility by our own replicators, and now feeding down the convection vortices, until they reach the outlet vents and are blasted into the jet streams."

Something rings a vague bell in the back of my mind. Snow... or something that looks like snow. My eyes widen, suddenly. T'Laihhae said something about stuff that wasn't snow....

"Can you check that?" I ask.

"Check what?" asks ch'Tholas with a slightly indulgent smile.

"I'm not sure. Scheduling? Work orders, whatever paperwork you have up here? Who ordered that much snow?"

"The ministries of ecology and meteorology jointly decide the weather schedules. Everything is going strictly according to procedure, I do assure you."

I look down again. "What about - I don't know - the chemical composition? Is there any way it could be tampered with?"

Ch'Tholas's smile is openly humouring me, now. "The load was synthesized according to our standard replicator patterns," he says in soothing tones. "If we need to check - well." He rises, goes to another console, sits down. "Here we are. Monitoring is automatic, of course, checking that the chemical mix does not depart from the programmed instructions... and an operator can scan the mixture, so -" his fingers dance on the control panel "- and view the results in real time, here -"

He stops. An image has formed on the panel's monitor screen - a complex shape of rods and spheres; I recognize it as an image of a molecule, but I can't identify the compound. But, whatever it is, it seems to be new to ch'Tholas too. "That's odd," he says. "I must have seen the nucleogenic compound a hundred times.... Oh, well. Probably just an updated formulation."

My skin crawls. "Perhaps," I say, "we should check that."

"I will verify through our library of standard compounds," says ch'Tholas, and presses a few buttons. It takes only a moment for the message to flash back on the screen: NOT FOUND.

I hit my wrist communicator. "Shohl to Grau, come in."

Ronnie's voice replies as I pull out my tricorder. "Grau here. What's up, kiddo?"

"The Falcon's got standard Starfleet data libraries, hasn't it? Including a full chemical database?" Spirits of Earth doesn't have the full computer archives a standard Starfleet vessel would have. An omission, one I should rectify. "I'm uploading a molecular structure scan to you now, I want you to identify it."

"On it." An agonizing pause, while my tricorder whines, reading the data from ch'Tholas's console and transmitting it to the Falcon's computers. There is no other sound, until Ronnie comes back with a single obscene word.

"Sorry," she adds. "Banned chemical warfare compound. Terran in origin, dates from, umm, less settled times. Pasicide-7. The word is half Latin and half Greek, no good will come of it. Brewed up by anti-Federation, anti-alien fanatics -"

The etymological references to the Earth root languages click inside my head. "Some kind of broad-spectrum toxin?"

"Kills anything, yeah. Anything with iron, copper, cobalt or nickel-based blood. Hell, it's even got a silicotropic radical, so it'll hit silicon-based lifeforms too. Stuff oughtta slaughter a Horta or a Vorta. Sorry. Something hit my inappropriate humour switch. Um. How much of this stuff are we talking about?"

"I don't understand." Ch'Tholas's voice is shaking.

I look down at the mists below. "About a planetary atmosphere's worth. Ronnie, what are we going to do?"

"Um. Well. One good thing about this muck, that molecule is fairly fragile. Chemical bonds will break on exposure to any sort of high-energy discharge. You might make a dent in it with your hand phaser, even."

Mentally, I compare the cubic kilometres of space beneath me to the charge in my hand weapon. "Not enough of one." I turn to ch'Tholas. "We're going to have to shut Storm Command down."

"We can't," he moans.

"We have to. You said it yourself. This stuff is going to blanket the whole of the planet."

"No, you don't understand." Ch'Tholas's voice is raw. "The vortices are self-sustaining. Even if I put all the generators into full reverse, right now, it would take at least eight hours to bring the cycles to a stop. We don't have anything like that time before the contaminated air reaches the outlet vents."

"Damnation. What are the alternatives? Think!" I'm saying it to myself, as much as to him. Release a neutralizing agent? We'd have to find it, synthesize it in bulk, release it into the dome - Not nearly enough time. Evacuate the dome? Use the cargo transporters to beam the poison into space? Once again, not enough time, not even with our ships' transporters at full capacity. But transporters work two ways -

"Ronnie. We're going to have to beam some sort of explosive into the dome, break up that poison before it reaches the outside air." I'm thinking fast, adrenaline blocking out the vast fear I feel, for my planet, my people, myself. "A massive UV flash charge would be best, but standard antimatter demolitions charges will do the job. Set up the Falcon's cargo transporters."

"On it," says Ronnie.

I turn back to ch'Tholas. "You'll have to take Storm Command's defences offline so we can do that. Can you manage that?"

"Yes. Yes. I think so." Ch'Tholas rises, crosses to another console. "How did this happen?"

"My guess, data subversion. Cyber-warfare. The Hegemony must have access to plenty of Vulcan techs and scientists who've worked on Andoria. They gimmicked your systems to replicate this, instead of the standard nucleogenic chemicals you expected." My mouth is dry. "If we hadn't caught it -"

"Tylha." Ronnie's voice on the comms. "Antimatter charges are getting ready now, but I'm still reading damn near total transporter inhibition over Storm Command."

"Turn that off," I order ch'Tholas.

He looks at me blankly. "I have."

I check with my tricorder. "Jamming waves right across all transporter frequencies. Still. Must be more data gimmickry. Can we get directly to the inhibitors and turn them off manually?"

"They're spaced out along the rim of the dome," ch'Tholas says. "The pneumo-cars... should be fast enough."

I gesture to the two technicians. I hope I don't look as scared as they do. "You two, with me. Let's find these things and get them shut off." I head for the pneumo-car door. "Ch'Tholas," I call back over my shoulder, "stay here, make sure all the other defence systems are down - and if you can think of anything else, anything, that will help - do it!"

"Yes," says ch'Tholas, in a small, broken voice.

The door hisses open and I bundle myself and the two techs into the car. "You two know what we're looking for?" I ask.

"Yes," says one of them. The other nods grimly.

"Good. If we can't... fix this... what other delivery systems do we have? Could we get a shuttlecraft inside the dome? Load it with charges, or just blow its engines -"

The pneumo-car jolts into motion. The vehicles are powered by air pressure, of which there is no shortage in Storm Command. I try not to think about what's in the air outside. The working areas of Storm Command are shielded, of course; the air currents would kill the people inside, otherwise - the sheer noise from those captive storms would be enough to kill. I hope the shields are good enough to keep out the poison....

"The inlet vents are shielded," says one of the techs. "We could turn the force fields off, but they're also blocked with duranium grilles and reinforced graphene filter meshes. And some of the grilles are part of the load-bearing structure, so if you tried to cut through them, the inlet tunnel would collapse." Sound defensive thinking. Now, it works against us. "The outlet vents can't be blocked, of course... but can even a Starfleet shuttle get through them, in the face of a six hundred kilometer an hour headwind?"

"So our best chance is the transporter," I say, "unless ch'Tholas can come up with something.... Beam down charges outside the jammed area and carry them inside?"

"Sure," says the talkative tech. "With all the security checkpoints opened up, it shouldn't take more than an hour... those inhibitors cover a lot of area." It took me long enough to get from the landing point to Central Overwatch, I remember.

The pneumo-car groans and rumbles to a halt, and we climb out into a huge empty space. The lip of the crater has been tunnelled out in places, built up in others, a whole ring of work spaces and passageways surrounding the dome. "This way," says the talkative tech, and we rattle down a metal stairway and out into a corridor. Lighting systems switch on, responding to our presence, throwing a thin harsh light over machines and structural girders and endless empty corridors. Our urgent footsteps echo from the concrete walls -

Something moves, up ahead of us. "What the -?" says the talkative tech. Beside an open doorway, floating about a metre and a half off the ground, is the stubby shape of a maintenance drone, its pointed nose sweeping across the air as it turns mechanically to and fro. "They're not supposed to -" the tech begins.

The drone turns towards his voice, and a needle of orange phaser light spits from its nose, spearing through the tech's body before he can finish his sentence. He drops inertly to the floor. I drop, too, and roll, my own phaser out, the beam searing out at the drone. Its shields sparkle and flare -

Then the drone itself sparkles, and suddenly there are two drones, and both are fleeing at divergent angles, hurtling down the corridors at maximum speed. One of them passes me, so close that I feel the breeze as it whooshes by. I turn and fire wildly after it, but miss.

The silent tech is kneeling over his companion's body. My wrist comm chirps at me. "Tylha," says Ronnie's voice, "I don't know what you're doing, but the transporter inhibitors just went up a notch or two -"

I curse, loudly. "It's not Storm Command's inhibitors. Somebody's planted drones here, and they're carrying inhibitor fields themselves. And they've got that damn self-replicator trick we used on the minefields in the Dominion War." Faced with a threat, the drone replicated itself and fled. It's not a trick they can pull off repeatedly - there's only so much material each drone can store in its transporter buffer - but it's enough to give us a royal headache. "We'll have to get all the security troops up here to hunt the damn things down."

I'm sure I see movement, somewhere at the edge of sight down the long curving corridor. I raise my phaser. No matter how quick these things breed, I will hunt them and kill them. All of them.

Then another voice speaks, echoing out of Storm Command's public address system. "Vice Admiral Shohl," ch'Tholas says. "I very much regret... there is no more time."

Heresy 45

Ronnie

The room is vast, with an echoing high ceiling, sparse furniture, and walls painted in white, and pale grey, and even paler blue. Because God forbid anyone on Andoria should forget what ice looks like, of course. The temperature is comfortable for Andorians, which means roughly "meat locker" for the likes of me.

The imposing man behind the imposing desk is Ves th'Oziph, the Chancellor of the Andorian Empire - Andoria being one of those Empires which gets along so much better without an actual Emperor. Th'Oziph is tall and statesmanlike and handsome - he looks like a Chancellor. The black-clad man standing beside him is short and rather tubby; his name is Thelev ch'Haras, and he looks more like an accountant than the High Marshal of the Imperial Guard, but the High Marshal is what he is. Then there's me, looking like a cyborg bag lady as usual, and Stileg, looking like one very scared Vulcan.

"It still seems incredible," th'Oziph murmurs.

"Incredible or not," ch'Haras says, "we need to be prepared." A practically-minded man. I could get to like him.

"Right," I say. "So. I guess we need to work out what sort of attack's coming, then. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a clue, there. I'm thinking Andoria is better prepared than Bercera IV was for a conventional attack...."

"Weapons on Andoria Spacedock," says ch'Haras, "smaller weapons platforms in planetary orbit, and outlying stations further out into the system... by the time any tricobalt bombers got past those, there would be very little left for the Imperial Guard to shoot. Besides, Andoria's planetary shields are second to none."

"Right, right. But, however good they are - could they stand up to a relativistic strike? That's the classic method of killing planets. In theory. Right?" A mass, launched at a speed approaching that of light. Usually a mass of lightweight material - ice is good - so that it doesn't just punch right through the planet, but deposits its whole kinetic payload in one job-lot of mass destruction. The Chancellor and the High Marshal exchange glances. "Don't tell me you can block a c-fractional strike... wouldn't you need, I dunno, an inertial damper about the size of Jupiter?"

"Not block," says ch'Haras slowly. "But... we believe we can deflect them."

"The Enfilade Network," th'Oziph says. "A number of sensor and deployment satellites spread through the outer system. The sensors register any mass travelling at excessive speeds, and signal the deployment devices to send countermissiles in by subspace jump. Reaction speeds need to be fast... but we believe they are adequate. The countermissiles are, essentially, nothing but overloaded warp engines - striking from above or below the system's ecliptic."

"Oh," I say. "Oh. Neat." You can't stop a relativistic projectile, not with anything short of a planet - hitting one will convert it to a mass of plasma, moving at near enough the same speed as it had originally. But if you hit it hard enough, far enough out from its target - at astronomical ranges, even the tiniest deflection in a course translates into a clean miss. And aiming from off the ecliptic - the plane in which most of Procyon's planets revolve - means the incoming missiles will be knocked straight off into interstellar space. "Real neat - so long as it works."

"We have some level of confidence. Though of course," ch'Haras adds dryly, "it is a little hard to give it a full-scale test."

"Hmm. Is it vulnerable, though? Data subversion attacks, that sort of thing? T'Laihhae reckoned the accident at ESD was down to deliberate sabotage...."

"There are precautions in place," says ch'Haras.

"And of course you're not telling me everything. Quite right too. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. OK, so direct attack and c-fractional strikes seem to be covered, so what else might they try?"

"Forgive me." Stileg speaks up for the first time since we viewed the datachips. "I am - I just - well, it seems to me that T'Nir is a Vulcan. She will approach this - this issue - logically -"

"I'm not entirely sure I trust Vulcan logic, just now," says ch'Haras.

"What I mean is," Stileg says, "it is unlikely that any plan of T'Nir's will have a single point of failure. There will most probably be an attack along multiple avenues simultaneously."

"We have the full resources of Andoria and the Imperial Guard," says th'Oziph. "Those are most certainly equal to any military threat. If you can give us some insight into T'Nir's thinking, to show us which avenues she is most likely to explore, that will be a considerable help."

"I - I am sorry, Chancellor," says Stileg. "I - do not follow T'Nir's logic in this matter. She was a friend and a colleague - I find it impossible to understand how she can -"

*/*decentralization of assets is key to successful strategy---avoid definable failure modes by ensuring multiple critical pathways to objective success*/* Pipe down, Two of Twelve.... I frown. "Stileg. Something you said."

All three of them turn to me as I chase down the fugitive thought. "Single point of failure. Does Andoria have one? Some critical spot, some jugular vein that T'Nir might go for?"

"Hard to think of one," ch'Haras says. "Andoria Spacedock is unique, of course, but it is not our only military asset in orbit, not by a long way."

"The planetary capital, perhaps," says th'Oziph. "Though we have normal disaster-recovery and fallback options in place - and many of our citizens would not be all that unhappy at the loss of most of Andoria's politicians...."

"Losing the capital, or the space station, wouldn't be fatal. Is there anything centralized and vital?"

"I suppose the fertile farmlands on the planet's surface are... smaller in area than on most worlds," says th'Oziph, "but they are not small enough to be considered centralized. The datanet, the planetary shields, the power generation network, all of these are distributed to a considerable extent." I can feel Two of Twelve approving of this. "I suppose there is Storm Command, but...."

"Well, don't keep me in suspense," I say, "what's Storm Command?"

"When we first developed weather control technology," th'Oziph says, "there was only one suitable location for placing the jet-stream moderators. An extinct volcanic caldera, high up, close to - well, the meteorologists would know the details. Over the centuries, it has been elaborated, but it is still the nerve centre of our planetary weather generators. Storm Command."

"Oh. Right. Sounds like a vulnerable point, then?"

"A single point," says ch'Haras, "but not a vulnerable one. We have always been fully alive to the potentialities for sabotage or damage. Storm Command is one of the most closely guarded areas on Andoria - the actual installation is shielded by a duranium alloy dome, five kilometres in diameter, and absolutely impregnable."

"Never liked that word, impregnable," I say. "Too much like unsinkable. We'd better check it out, however unlikely it sounds to you."

Th'Oziph and ch'Haras exchange glances again. "Technically, it is off-limits to anyone except a properly cleared Andorian citizen," th'Oziph says. "An exception might of course be made -"

The door of the office hisses open. "Sirs." A flustered-looking aide pokes his head through. "Two ships have entered the system - a Charal-class escort with Starfleet identification, and a Romulan Republic warship -"

"Ah, right," I say, "that'll be more of the good guys. Come to think of it, my buddy Tylha is an Andorian citizen, so you could send her off to look at the weather machines." Andoria's climate is managed? You wouldn't think so to look at the place. I take care not to say that in my out -loud voice.

Ch'Haras smiles thinly. "And are we expecting any more help from Starfleet?"

"I wish I knew," I mutter. "Tylha must have got the word out, somewhere, but... our communications were in a lousy state before Earth Spacedock got broken, so I don't know what they must be like now." I find it hard to meet his eyes. "We'll... do what we can. I hope it's enough."

Heresy 44

T'Laihhae

Tylha's expression is stricken. The gaunt Borg woman's face could get no paler, but it is frozen in shock, the one organic eye the only thing moving in it.

I can't blame them. It was a shock to me, when I saw it. There was a time, of course, when any patriotic Romulan would have been glad to see the Federation tear itself apart... but not now. Not now.

Tylha finds her voice. "We need to get this," she says, shakily, "to the Federation Council, to Starfleet Command, and to Andoria itself, first. Then -" She breaks off. Her eyes widen.

I turn. Behind me, the transparent wall gives an excellent view of the interior of Earth Spacedock, and the starships moving slowly within it. I see at once what has claimed Tylha's attention. Two ships - a large Nebula-class cruiser and a smaller Griffon-class warship - are moving too close together. Even as I watch, the two of them collide, white hulls crashing together with seeming slowness that belies the violence of the impact.

Alarms sound. Tylha is on her feet. The Nebula is spinning across the cavern of the docking bay; it sweeps past us, the massive hull blotting out the view for an instant as it swings by the window, a huge curving mass of metal. I lose sight of the other ship. The Nebula wobbles for a moment, reaction mass spurting desperately from its thruster assemblies. Then one nacelle sweeps irresistibly across a cupola protruding from the docking bay wall, leaving nothing but crumpled wreckage and gouting air in its wake.

"That was docking control!" Grau yells.

"This shouldn't be possible," Tylha says. "There are too many safeties in the system - things like this shouldn't happen -"

A dreadful possibility occurs to me. "Maybe someone made it happen," I say.

"Sabotage?" I can almost see Tylha's mind racing. "Then we need to preserve the information. Ronnie!" The Borg woman snaps to attention. "Your ship has full transwarp capacity, right? Take Stileg and the data chips, get them direct to Andoria. I'll be right behind you. Move!"

Grau seizes Stileg with one hand; I press the data chips into her other one. Tylha's decision makes sense - with Earth Spacedock in a state of emergency, too much of Starfleet's communications around Earth will be compromised. Better to alert the Federation from a relatively stable location - and to alert the Andorians to an impending attack.

And Spacedock is quite clearly in a state of emergency. I can see, now, what has happened to the second ship; it has collided with the central pillar that runs through the docking bay - the pillar which forms the central core of the spacedock itself. Little shudders run through the deckplates, and the wailing of alarms is insistent. The Nebula has slowed and steadied, but a baleful green light is leaking from its damaged nacelle.

"There's an auxiliary control room near here," says Tylha. She looks hard at me. "I suppose you know more than you ought to about ESD's systems?"

"I can learn fast," I assure her.

"Then let's move." She leads the way, through corridors that bustle with purposeless, panicky crowds. I follow her as she reaches a door, thumbs the biometric lock, and dashes inside.

The auxiliary control room is little more than a cubbyhole with a viewport; there is just room for the two of us to work at the consoles built into the walls. Tylha starts tapping into the comms net, while I set to work on the systems panel. Alarm lights are flickering... except on one bank of controls, which stubbornly register an all-clear. Sabotage, or merely error? I cut them out of the circuit, and start to take stock. The controls are not unlike the ones at the Vulcan assembly yards....

"Command and control are still routed through the main station," Tylha mutters. She punches a control switch. "Docking bay control now patched to substation 37-2-D, authorization code Shohl Delta Tango Two Four Niner." Panels suddenly light up and come alive under my hands. A 3-D display shows the interior of the bay, marking the positions of the starships within it. Two icons are ringed by flashing red warning symbols. "USS Trifid, Nebula class... USS Marengo, Griffon class," I call out.

Tylha touches another control, and voices fill the air.

" - declaring an emergency, I have SI compromise and possible warp core destabilization - "

" - medevac units to assembly points Delta through Juliet - "

" - vacuum warning in docking control, repeat, vacuum warning in docking control - "

" - anyone seeing this? Radiation spikes across the spectrum - "

" - God! Medical to transporter room, we have scramble cases! - "

Tylha and I both wince at that last one. She hits another control and speaks, and her voice echoes back from the public address system. "All stations, this is Vice Admiral Shohl. Main docking control is down, I have command functions running from a substation. USS Trifid, you are leaking warp radiation from your damaged nacelle, go immediately to cold shutdown, we will tractor you in. USS Marengo, report your status on Channel Red. All other ships, hold station, stand ready to assist."

She sounds clear and calm, which will help a lot. I check my controls and displays. "Docking port 32-C is clear," I say, "and I think I can get the Nebula in there." The docking bay boasts a formidable internal array of tractors and repulsors, enough to juggle starships like toys. I hope.

"Do it," Tylha says. "Don't worry too much about neatness. So long as they've stopped moving and stopped leaking - "

"This is Captain Willis on the Marengo," a voice breaks in.

Tylha turns back to the comms board. "Status?"

"Not good, sir." Willis sounds worried. "We have major structural damage, and we seem to be hung up on something at the central core. I don't think I can pull her loose on thrusters alone. And we took a power surge along the EPS grid, and I think it's destabilized the intermix chamber. My engineer reports we may lose AM containment."

A core breach. In a Federation ship, that means the antimatter fuel supply leaks out of its containment fields, to interact with the normal matter of the ship - with explosive results. My heart is in my mouth. If the breach cannot be contained - Normally, a ship can eject a malfunctioning core and move off on impulse drive to outrun the resulting explosion. But, in the confined space of the docking bay - an ejected core would not just wreck everything inside, it would set off a chain reaction with the cores of other ships, with the spacedock's own stores of antimatter and deuterium fuel.

If the Marengo's core breaches now, Earth Spacedock will become, briefly, a second sun in Earth's sky.

All this flashes through my mind as my fingers move, automatically, on the tractor controls. The beams reach out, grab the inert bulk of the Trifid, guide her towards the docking port. The Federation interface is - not wholly unfamiliar. The Trifid makes contact, albeit with a jar that must have knocked everyone aboard off their feet. But the status light on the docking seal flickers and turns green - the people on that ship, at least, are safe.

For the moment. Tylha is frowning intently at the telemetry coming in from the Marengo. "Get me a read on that obstruction," she snaps - perhaps to me, perhaps to the captain. I call up the schematics anyway. "Comms are snarled again," Tylha mutters. "Can't contact main admin - not that Quinn or any of the others could do more than we can -"

The situation with the Marengo takes shape in my schematics viewer. It is an awkward one. One flange of the warship's upper hull is wedged hard against a major structural member. On the screen, it looks a simple enough thing to deal with; one hard pull and the ship comes loose. But in reality, we are dealing with thousands of tons of metal, already crushed and deformed by the impacts.

I run the numbers in my head, and turn to Tylha. "We can tug her loose with the tractor arrays," I say, "but not without compromising her structural integrity - unless we can take several hours to do the job slowly and steadily."

"We don't have that much time." I had already worked that out, from the plummeting graphs I can see on Tylha's screens. She takes a deep breath before she hits the comms panel again. "Captain Willis. There is no way to salvage your ship before a core breach. On my authority, my responsibility, Captain - abandon ship. That is a direct order."

There is a long moment's pause, then Willis replies, "Aye, aye, sir." There is naked pain in the man's voice.

"Transporter ops will be safe now the Trifid is no longer radiating," Tylha says. "Get your people off, and slave your controls to my remote access. As soon as we read no life signs aboard your ship, we'll get to work." Her voice softens a little. "You did the best you could, Captain, now go."

She cuts communications. I'm already readying the tractor arrays. If we can pull the crippled ship off the central pillar, out through the docking bay doors - if we can hold her core together by remote control long enough to do that -

The lights flicker. Tylha swears. "EPS fluctuation. Marengo's warp plasma must be interfering with the central lines - Damn it. Lost Spacedock door functions."

I glance at the viewport, at the hectares of solid metal that close the docking bay off from space.

"Nothing for it," says Tylha. She taps out commands on the panel. "Emergency override, condition red, keyword Open Sesame. Blow Spacedock doors."

Across the docking bay, brilliant flashes of light spark in a precise square around the door assembly - shaped explosive charges, cutting through the structural members, slicing the entire massive doorway out of the side of Earth Spacedock. The space station shivers, inertial dampeners unable to block out all the shock. More flares of light - one-shot solid-fuel rocket boosters, blasting the severed doors out and aside into the void.

"Marengo reads empty," Tylha says. "Let's do this."

I have already set up the sequence I need; now I start it. The full power of all the tractor beams I can bring to bear pulls at the Marengo, wrenching her on what I hope is the right angle to pull her loose. For a moment, the ship remains motionless, bathed in the blue glare of the beams -

Then she jerks abruptly and comes free, random jets of flame spurting from both the ship and the central pillar. No longer restricted, the Marengo hurtles towards the tractor assemblies. I switch polarity, turning the beams to repulsor mode, and again the whole station rings like a bell with the impact. Tylha is cursing steadily as she fights to retain whatever control she has on the ship's dying warp core. I can hear and feel the groaning of the dock's stressed members. The Marengo slows, stops, begins to move in the opposite direction. I shift the beams, switch in another array, nudging the ship in the right direction -

The lights in the room flicker, go out completely, come back on at low power. The control interface flashes gibberish at me before it clears.

"Another random power surge," says Tylha.

"I've lost beam focus," I say. "Trying to regain now." Right now, the Marengo is drifting towards another wall. I have to regain control, have to get her moving towards that empty doorway -

"Dumping everything I have to reinforce SI generators," says Tylha. "No time to be subtle. Hit it with everything you can, and I think I can keep her together till she's through the doors -"

The tractor controls are sluggish, erratic, unresponsive. Somehow, I get the arrays focused again, the beams reaching out to the doomed ship, slamming into her, knocking her onto the right heading. It is not gentle. The end of one nacelle comes loose, spinning freely across the docking bay. The Marengo is moving... is on the right course... is dwindling in the distance, into the square hole in Spacedock's side, and the black sky beyond -

The black square turns white, dazzling, eye-searing white. I close my eyes tight, reflexively, while fresh alarms wail and the deck rocks beneath me, tossed by a sudden storm.

It passes. I'm still breathing - always a good sign. The after-image fades from my tear-filled eyes, as I hear Tylha's voice, echoing back again from the PA system -

"All stations. All ships. We have had a warp core breach within minimum safe distance. We have radiation and debris hazards, and structural damage as yet undetermined. I am putting docking bay in shutdown and declaring Earth Spacedock a disaster zone. Relinquishing controls to Emergency Central now. All ships, all stations, follow your assigned disaster procedures. Substation 37-2-D out."

She takes a deep ragged breath. "I should stay and help with the emergency," she mutters. "But I think we've got another emergency." She touches a wrist communicator. I raise an eyebrow at that - Starfleet usually relies on its combadges. "Direct link to my ship. I've needed it, lately." She keys the wristband. "F'hon. Come in."

"Here, skipper," says a voice. "Are you OK? We saw the bang -"

"I'm fine. Get a lock on this communicator, though. I'm going to get near the outside of the station, and then you can beam me aboard. Once I'm there, we're going to Andoria, and fast. Did the USS Falcon get away yet?"

"Vice Admiral Grau's ship transwarped straight out of its docking cradle, some minutes ago. Traffic control's still screaming - Skipper, what's going on?"

"I'll explain once I'm back aboard, F'hon. Contact you again shortly. Shohl out."

"Tell your crew, two to beam out," I say. I look at her, levelly. "You will want my copies of the recordings, and my verification scans. And, very possibly, the firepower of the Messalina, too. My ship's transwarp speed can match yours." I fix her eyes with mine. "It's clear, now, that the Hegemony is your enemy, as well as mine. If we stand together... then we stand a chance."

She looks hard at me, then gives one sharp nod. "All right. Let's move."