“Looks like they went for cover.” He looked up at Reyes as he closed the device. “I think this is our window, Diego.”
“All right,” Reyes said, his hand hovering over the door’s manual control. “On my mark.”
Fisher looked at Latour and nodded at the disruptor. “You want to hang on to that?” he asked hopefully.
Latour looked horrified. “I don’t know how to use one!”
“Terrific,” Fisher said, and unstrapped his tricorder. “Switch with me. Keep an eye on the screen for Klingon life signs.”
“And . . . now,” Reyes said, slapping the button. The captain went out first, verified the absence of enemy combatants, and gave the others the all-clear. “Doctor Latour, you’re with me. Which way?”
Latour pointed.
“Stay behind me,” Reyes told the civilian. “Gannon, watch our stern.” He sprinted down to the end of the corridor and peered around it as the others caught up. Once again, no one stood in their way.
The next few corridors were as deserted as the first two, albeit riddled with abandoned tools and cases. Unfinished repair jobs marred the walls and ceiling.
“Talk to me, Latour,” Reyes whispered as they approached another bend. “Are we clear?”
Latour swallowed as he panned the tricorder. “Um . . .”
“Don’t wave it around so fast,” Fisher advised. “Give it a chance to work.”
“I think we’re—”
“bIH vISam!”
— so screwed,Fisher thought as he pulled Latour into cover behind a support column. Disruptor fire burned the air. A few steps ahead of them, Reyes found shelter behind a tool crate, while several meters behind, Gannon returned fire from a recessed doorway along the corridor, shooting past her fellow officers.
Their attackers, firing rifles from behind a thick cross brace at the next T-junction, were two of the biggest Klingons Fisher had ever seen.
“What are you doing?” Latour yelled as Fisher fumbled to reset the disruptor. “Start firing back!”
“Son,” Fisher grated as enemy fire seared the wall between them, “I’ve gotten this far in my Starfleet career without taking another sentient life, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna start now.”
“Are you crazy?” cried Latour. “They’re going to kill us!”
“Zeke!” Reyes shouted, trying to get off a shot from behind the crate and failing. The Klingons kept him pinned. He nodded in their direction. “The ceiling!”
Fisher looked, saw what Reyes meant, and stared back at his friend in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I can’t make the shot!” Reyes snarled. “Gannon’s at the wrong angle! It’s gotta be you!”
Another blast tore into the column. Fragments flew. “I’m getting too old for this!” Fisher yelled at Reyes, blinking sweat from his eyes as he tried to take aim.
“Oh, really?” Reyes yelled back, ducking lower to escape more suppression fire. “I seem to recall you saying the same thing ten years ago back on the Artemis! Exactly when the hell were you young enough for this, Zeke?”
“Will you just shut up?!”Fisher shouted, and pressed the trigger.
The beam struck true, blasting through a severely compromised section of the rock ceiling supported by the cross brace. Chunks of rock broke free, descending on the Klingons in a cloud of dust. Fisher waited for the inevitable cave-in, or for the burly Klingons to shrug off the debris, madder than ever. But after nearly a minute of silence and slowly dissipating cloud, neither of his expectations was met.
Reyes, covered in fine gray dust, cautiously picked himself up off the floor. Fisher squinted down the corridor. The brace was still there, as was the thick rock roof that protected them from hard vacuum. The Klingons could be heard groaning under the pile of rubble.
Reyes nodded in approval. “That was nice work.”
“I want a transfer,” Fisher said.
Reyes scoffed. “No, you don’t.”
“You’re gonna get me killed!”
“You’re too ornery to die.”
“Are you gentlemen finished?” Gannon asked as she made her way past them. “We haven’t reached our objective yet.”
“Fine, you take point this time,” Reyes said. “I’ll bring up the rear.”
Fisher sighed and went to coax Doctor Latour to his feet. The poor fellow had gone fetal at some point during the firefight, and needed reassurance that the immediate danger was past.
They picked their way past the fallen Klingons and finally reached the entrance to the facility’s laboratory wing, but the door was sealed. Gannon pried open a nearby maintenance panel, started making adjustments to the hardware within, and was just about to force the door when it suddenly opened.
Standing just beyond the threshold was Gorkon.
Tall and imposing as ever, the Klingon looked as if he were cut from stone. His elaborate baldric was emblazoned with the symbols of his rank and House, and his personal dagger—his d’k tagh,Fisher remembered—showed prominently at his hip. A pair of armed guards stood just behind each of his broad shoulders, and an all too familiar hint of derision tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“ ‘Once more unto the breach’ . . . ?” the general asked softly. “And yet you still wage war like a child, Reyes, resorting to trickery and subterfuge in order to escape confrontation.”
“I’m here now,” Reyes pointed out. “And I’m not the one hiding in a hole.”
“No, you’re simply the one covered in its dust, like a targrooting through ash,” said Gorkon. “How does it feel to know you could get this far only by taking the coward’s way—beaming biosign decoys into the mines to trick my warriors into believing Dauntlesshad deployed assault teams?”
Reyes smirked. “That really pissed you off, didn’t it?”
“I always suspected you had no true stomach for battle.” Gorkon’s eyes moved to consider the rest of the landing party. “Doctor Fisher, is it not? And you must be Commander Gannon. May you die as well as your predecessor.”
That was when Reyes lost it, raising his captured disruptor with surprising speed and pointing it at Gorkon’s face. The general’s guards quickly raised their weapons toward Reyes, even as Fisher and Gannon took aim at the guards. Standoff.
There was dark amusement in Gorkon’s eyes.
Fisher knew Diego wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger on the man he held personally responsible for last year’s deaths aboard Dauntless,especially that of Rajiv Mehta. The pain of those losses had not abated, and Fisher worried it might yet blind Reyes to the consequences of indulging his need to avenge his fallen friends.
The moment passed. Reyes slowly lowered his disruptor and surrendered it butt-first to Gorkon. One by one, the other weapons all went down.
Reyes’s eyes never left the Klingon’s. “I demand to speak with Doctor Duvadi.”
“You’re in no position to demand anything, Captain. This asteroid is no longer Federation territory, and its inhabitants have chosen freely to join the Klingon Empire.”
“You mean they were coerced.”
Gorkon shrugged. “Semantics. They made a choice. Had they chosen instead to wait for Dauntlessto answer their distress call, they would be dead now. They chose life.” The derisive smile returned. “Is that not what the Federation advocates?”
Reyes nodded toward the d’k tahghanging from Gorkon’s belt and said in a quiet voice, “You allow me to speak to Doctor Duvadi now, or I’m going to take that dagger you’re so fond of and feed it to you. How’s that for a choice?”
“That’s enough!”
Fisher looked past the Klingons, startled. Even Gorkon seemed surprised. An Arkenite woman, possessing the elongated, backswept, and hairless head that made her species so easily recognizable, strode toward them from the inner laboratory complex. Shouldering her way past the general’s guards, she interposed herself between the two ship captains. Looking up at Gorkon, she said, “General, I would like a few minutes to converse privately with these officers.”