Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice (3 page)

They reached the nearest dome and Koir's hands rose up, a pair of razor-sharp daggers glinting dully in each fist. He pierced the fabric skin of the building and cut open an entrance with two downward slashes. A tongue of thick material lolled out, and a gust of warm interior air blew across their faces.

Koir took a step closer, but Ga'trk hesitated, gripping her
mek'leth
tightly. The inside of the dome-tent was completely empty.

A new chill ran through her, something ingrained in her marrow from years of walking a warrior's path. The commander spun in place, drawing in a lungful of acrid air for a shout.

Not fast enough.

Buried in the snow, deep enough that they were lost to Koir's sensor scans, a dozen spherical pods now blinked into life and shot up through the slush to waist height, buoyed by antigravity generators. Each silvery globe was split around its equator by a glowing orange line; the emitter band for a multidirectional phaser discharge.

They fired as one, each pod releasing a ring of fire that expanded outward in a blazing sweep. Those caught in the path of the beam—and there were none who avoided that fate—were cut through. Some bisected like herd beasts at slaughter, others rendered without limbs or heads.

Ga'trk saw her
mek'leth,
her hand still gripping it tightly, forearm up to the elbow neatly severed, fall away in a jet of purple blood to the dirty snow at her feet. Agony poured into her, and she howled into the blizzard as the domes caught light. Plasma charges hidden beneath the floors turned them all into crackling bonfires, and the churn of flames briefly set the blizzard to a hissing, poisonous rain.

She staggered a short distance before the pressure wave from the plasma detonations knocked her off her feet and face-first into the snow. The ache of the cut limb was nothing to what came next; the unspeakable pain as her cloak burned, the armor plates on her back slagging and melting into her flesh.

Commander Ga'trk died cursing a foe that had never even shown her a face, an enemy who would lay a trap so craven. She died there, on that nameless ball of ice and rock, she and her men now ghosts in more than name.

*  *  *

Light-years away, on a military base on the planet Archanis, in a bunker that showed on no maps and behind a door that bore no detail, an aging warrior took up his
d'k tahg
and cut a wound along his forearm. The fresh mark made by the general's honor blade joined other long-healed white scars that webbed his flesh.

He let blood drip from the knife to the floor and grimaced at the other senior warriors in the command chamber. The glassy artificiality of the ice world faded around them, and they were once more standing upon the grid of a holodeck. Behind them, the technicians and operations crew said nothing, waiting.

The general began; first a low growl in the deepest register, held in the pit of his chest. Building and building until he gave it voice, made it a roar. He threw back his head and bellowed defiance, the echo of his cry calling from the lips of every Klingon in the room.

When the death shout faded, the old soldier sheathed his blade, considering his self-inflicted wound. It was his way to do this, to remember each and every death that came from his command. Each
cut was a warrior, a ship, a battle squad lost to Sto-Vo-Kor, a blood cost that he had been responsible for.

“Enough,” he muttered, turning to his adjutant. “This is the end to it.”

The adjutant exchanged a wary glance with the other officers. “General. This endeavor stems from a request of great import. From the highest levels.”

“I know that, whelp.” The general ran a hand through his thinning beard, his forehead ridges thickening as he grimaced. “And we have done as the alliance demands of us. But enough now. No more Klingon blood will be spilled in the name of this.”

“Honorless dogs,” muttered another of the warriors. “They knew we were coming. Perhaps the Orions managed to warn them. . . .”

“What shall we tell our ally?” demanded the adjutant. “We were asked this favor because we were capable of it! Now we taste blood and we halt in our tracks?”

The general's blow came out of nowhere, a sweeping backhand that shattered the adjutant's nose and turned his face into a blood-streaked mess. He had the strength not to fall, but only barely, staggering back and clutching at the injury.

“Never dare to lecture me on
the taste of blood,
” said the old warrior, pausing to lick a little of the purple fluid that had gathered over the studs of his gauntlet. “We were asked to perform this deed, flattered by praise of our martial prowess! But it is hollow. See the truth, fool. The ally asks this of us not because we are capable of it, but because he considers our warriors
disposable
. He does not wish to sully himself with acts of murder, even in righteous vengeance. Better he uses the Klingons to be his wolves.” He eyed the others in
the room, daring them to speak against him. “He has us do what he will not.” He shook his head. “But we have done enough already.”

The general stalked forward and set his burning gaze on the adjutant. “Heed me,” he told the other Klingon. “This is the message you will pass on. Say it to him, word for word, so there is no error.” The old warrior switched from his native tongue to the human language of Federation Standard. “Tell him that the Bajoran will have to do his own dirty work from now on.”

*  *  *

Vale became aware that she was pacing the captain's ready room in a slow, continuous orbit, and she sighed, pausing before she sat down on the edge of Riker's desk. The padd in her hand was filled with pages of regulation-issue Starfleet paperwork, docking protocols and the like transmitted over from McKinley Station after
Titan
had berthed at the platform; essentially it was boilerplate documentation, but it still needed the authorization of a ship's commanding officer—and as Riker had been summoned away before
Titan
's impulse grids had a chance to cool, right now that was her.

She stared at the page without really seeing it, and she blew out a breath. Looking away, Christine glanced out the ready room's window to where the curve of the Earth's surface caught the glow of a sunrise. It looked the same as it ever had, she thought. From up here, peaceful and quiet.

Down there, it had to be a careful, civil chaos. In the entire history of the United Federation of Planets, from its formation more than two centuries ago, no serving president had ever been assassinated in office.
Not that there hadn't been attempts, of course. Ra-Ghoratreii of Efros had come the closest to taking that dubious honor, after the whole Gorkon conspiracy business, and it was barely a year ago that Nan Bacco herself had been the target of a failed effort on the Orion homeworld.

But now it had actually
happened
. Bacco's death was something new and terrible. The people of the Federation had never lost a leader like this, and no one knew where to start to process it. Candlelight vigils and memorial ceremonies were already being held on member-worlds across the quadrant, and the scenes of public despair from the late president's home Cestus III were harrowing.

The timing of it couldn't have been worse. The wounds of a Federation bloodied by the Borg Invasion were finally healing, and concerns over the rise of the Typhon Pact, the newest power in the galactic arena, had found some measure of stability. Olive branches had been extended to the Gorn and the Romulans. There was a sense of moving forward, that perhaps the quadrant was past the most terrible, that there was hope again.

But now this brutal attack on someone respected across the galaxy had shaken the people of the UFP once more. Add to that the uncertainty surrounding the relationship between the Federation and Andor, one of its founding members, and the ramifications of Bacco's death went far beyond Vale's ability to grasp.

She lost herself in the view from the window, measuring her own thoughts. In a way, she felt a little coldblooded about it all. At first, Vale had experienced the same hard jolt of shock and anger that many of her crewmates did, the moment of breathless astonishment
at the scenes of the assassination. But then, like a switch flipping inside her mind, all that emotion had been buried.

She looked at the news footage of the incident light-years distant on DS9, and she was analyzing it, calculating the clinical facts of the killing. Before
Titan,
before Starfleet, Christine Vale had been a peace officer in the Pibroch City Police Department on Izar, and somewhere underneath the arrowhead combadge and black uniform tunic, she was still a cop at heart. She looked at Bacco's death and saw a crime scene, disconnecting herself from the emotional content of the offense and asking the dispassionate questions.
Who was the shooter? How did they get a weapon through station security? What was the motive?

On one level, she knew that the best investigative minds in the UFP were already finding answers to those questions and many more, but right at that moment, Vale wanted to be there with them, working the case. If for no other reason than to be able to begin to make sense of the brutality of the act, to feel as if she were doing something about it.

A sigh escaped her lips and she looked back to the padd, tapping the authorization tab, reluctantly returning to the matter at hand. When the intercom chimed in the quiet of the ready room, she almost jumped.

“Commander Vale?”
Out on the bridge, Tuvok was keeping a watch on things.
“Incoming message for your attention.”

Despite the fact that she was alone in the room, Vale drew up and straightened. “Pipe it in here, will you?”

A moment later, Will Riker's voice issued out of
the air.
“Christine? Do we have privacy?”
She could hear the faint sound of wind noise in the background, as if he was up on a roof somewhere.

“It's just me. Go ahead, sir.”

“I have had . . . a very interesting morning.”

“Let me guess. The brass decided to give you early retirement, Captain?” It was a weak attempt to lighten her tone, and it fell flat.

“Worse than that,”
said Riker.
“As of now, I
am
the brass. It's not ‘Captain' anymore. Akaar just promoted me to rear admiral.”

She was genuinely speechless for a long moment before finding her voice again. “Does it make me a bad person that the first thought I have is, ‘Do I get the ship now?' ”

Vale heard the brief smile in his voice.
“Don't push your luck, Commander. I've got you right where I need you.”

It was tough to frame her next question, so in the end she gave up. “Look, I'm just going to put this out there; what the hell is going on, sir?”

“Damned if I know. Apparently I get an office and an aide, but so far this promotion doesn't appear to come with any explanations. But there's more going on down here than just the fallout from the shooting. I'm going to need your steady hand up there, Chris.”

She nodded. “Aye, sir. The crew should be told. And they'll have questions.”

“They can take a number and get in line behind me.”
He hesitated.
“Here's the thing. We don't know how long
Titan
is going to be here, so my first order with this new rank is to run up a shore leave schedule, grant liberty to whomever needs it. I think our people could use some air and open sky. And McKinley's tech staff can take the
opportunity to give the ship a tune-up. Make that happen. In the meantime . . .”
He drifted off for a second.
“I'll try to figure out how to explain this to Deanna. It's a lot to process.”

A grim certainty settled on Vale. “Captain . . . I mean,
Admiral
 . . . don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't think you deserve the laurels and all . . . but this has come from out of nowhere. Especially now, after the assassination.”

“You're not saying anything I'm not already thinking, believe me. I'm sure Admiral Akaar has his reasons. Maybe he'll see fit to share them with me, hopefully sooner rather than later. Carry on, Commander.”

“Aye, sir,” she added. “And, uh, congratulations.”

“Thanks,”
said Riker.
“I hope.”

I
t was a good view, Riker reflected.

Out across the bay, looking in the direction of the great spans of the Golden Gate Bridge and beyond them the towers of San Francisco, there were only clear blue skies and the occasional puff of white cloud on the coastal breezes. Silver dots—flyers and air trams—caught blinks of sunshine as they moved through the city's aerial lanes. San Francisco was waking up, going to work, but Riker had been in the office since before dawn.

He hardly felt like his feet had touched the ground since the brisk promotion ceremony a day earlier. Lieutenant Ssura, now permanently assigned as his adjutant, had taken him to his new base of operations in the south tower of the Starfleet Command complex and spent the rest of the day acclimating the new admiral on the details of his posting. By the time they were done, it was ship's night up on
Titan,
and Riker wearily chose to snatch some sleep in the transient officers' barracks rather than beam back into orbit and wake his wife and daughter.

Deanna seemed to be taking the news a lot better than he did. She immediately dropped into what he had come to consider “counselor mode” and said
all the right things to set his mind at ease . . . for the moment. Talking to her, he found all the trivia of a hundred minor decisions welling up in his thoughts.
Would they need to find a home on Earth now? A new school for Tasha?
Will Riker hadn't lived anywhere other than in the cabins of a starship for almost three decades, and the notion of suddenly finding a home back here on Earth was strangely banal and alien all at once. He'd been away for so long, back when escape from his youth in Alaska had been the only thing he wanted. It seemed odd coming home like this, the opportunity to think on it robbed from him.