Rise Like Lions Read online

  IN THE MIRROR UNIVERSE…

  Miles “Smiley” O’Brien struggles to hold together his weary band of freedom fighters in their war against the overwhelming might of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. Each day pushes the rebels on Terok Nor one step closer to defeat, but with nowhere left to run, the time has come to make their last stand.

  Light-years away, Mac Calhoun and his Romulan allies harass Klingon forces with devious hit-and-run attacks. But Calhoun has a grander ambition: he intends to merge his fleet with the Terran Rebellion and lead it to victory—or die trying.

  Meanwhile, a bitter feud threatens to shatter the Alliance from within. The old rivalry between the Klingons and the Cardassians erupts into open warfare as each vies for the upper hand in their partnership.

  Manipulating events from its hidden redoubts, Memory Omega—the secret operation initiated by Spock a century earlier—sees its plans come to fruition sooner than expected. But striking early means risking everything—and if the revolution fails, Spock’s vision for the future will be lost forever.

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  K’Ehleyr emerged from the mist behind Picard.

  “I thought you didn’t care about the rebellion. Because it sure sounds like you do.”

  He looked back at her to find himself the object of three different stares. K’Ehleyr was amused; Barclay looked hopeful; Troi wore a mask of desperation. Picard looked back at Saavik. “I’ll ask for the last time: Why am I here?”

  Saavik was composed, calm, and dignified. She spoke without emotion or hauteur, but with simple, direct honesty. “We have watched you for a long time, Mister Picard. I believe that because of your history and your inherent good nature, you are the sort of person who can help us reach out to the Terran Rebellion, by carrying our offer of support and leadership to them. We need someone from outside our sheltered society, someone with a reputation beyond reproach who is known to the rebels, to act as our ambassador. I wish you to be that ambassador.

  “And you are correct in your assertions about Spock’s timetable. His projected timeline of events was off because he did not account for further interference in our affairs by persons from the alternate universe. Thanks to events that have transpired on and around Bajor, the future has taken shape far sooner than Spock expected. Consequently, we—and you—must act now, before this pivotal moment in history slips away from us.”

  Shocked and intrigued, Picard asked, “What pivotal moment?”

  Saavik placed her hand upon Picard’s shoulder.

  “The one at which a rebellion becomes a revolution.”

  Pocket Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ™, ® and © 2011 by CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from CBS Studios Inc.

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  First Pocket Books paperback edition December 2011

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  Cover design by Alan Dingman

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0719-2 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0720-8 (eBook)

  For those who continue to fight the good fight

  Contents

  Part I: Ferro Comitante

  Chapter 1: Keener Fangs

  Chapter 2: The Messenger

  Chapter 3: Plans of Attack

  Chapter 4: Death Is a Name for Beauty

  Chapter 5: The Promise of Shadows

  Chapter 6: Storm Sign

  Chapter 7: Whispers in the Wind

  Chapter 8: Trinity

  Chapter 9: On the Hunt

  Chapter 10: Eve of Destruction

  Chapter 11: The Path of Most Resistance

  Chapter 12: Invisible Effects

  Chapter 13: Alamo

  Chapter 14: Shadows upon Shadows

  Chapter 15: The Face of Anarchy

  Chapter 16: Blood for Blood

  Chapter 17: Gone to Ground

  Chapter 18: The Damnation of Memory

  Chapter 19: Ambition’s Debt

  Chapter 20: The New Wind of Change

  Chapter 21: Under the Rose

  Chapter 22: The Name of Action

  Part II: Deballare Superbos

  Chapter 23: Crowns of Blood and Fire

  Chapter 24: Agents of a New Dawn

  Chapter 25: Nor Shall My Sword Sleep in My Hand

  Chapter 26: A Price Paid in Blood

  Chapter 27: The Wine of Desolation

  Chapter 28: Love in Wartime

  Chapter 29: The Last Argument of Kings

  Chapter 30: Blood on the Scales

  Chapter 31: Aggressive Expansion

  Chapter 32: Keen and Bloody Swords

  Chapter 33: The Hour of Fire

  Chapter 34: Fury’s Reign

  Chapter 35: Blood and Bones

  Part III: Post Tenebras Lux

  Chapter 36: Pax Omega

  Chapter 37: Severed Bonds

  Chapter 38: An Epitaph to War

  Chapter 39: People of Hope

  Chapter 40: Peaceable Kingdom

  Epilogue

  The Far Side of Night

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Historian’s Note

  Rise Like Lions begins in January 2377, immediately following the events of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels Fearful Symmetry and The Soul Key, and concludes in 2381. All events occur in the alternate universe first seen in the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror” and revisited in several Deep Space Nine episodes, starting with “Crossover.”

  Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

  —Cicero

  ‘Rise like Lions after slumber

  In unvanquishable number,

  Shake your chains to earth like dew

  Which in sleep had fallen on you—

  Ye are many—they are few.’

  —Percy Bysshe Shelley,

  The Mask of Anarchy

  PART I

  Ferro Comitante

  2377

  1

  Keener Fangs

  M’k’n’zy of Calhoun knew there were only two ways this would end: He would win, or he would die. And Mac didn’t plan on dying—not he
re, not like this.

  He barked orders over the thundering explosions that rocked the Excalibur. “Roll to starboard! Keep our shields toward the surface!” The tactical display next to his command chair flickered with new data indicating that defensive systems were activating on the planet’s surface and targeting his ship. “Tactical! Report!”

  Soleta—his half-Vulcan, half-Romulan lover and de facto second-in-command—responded without looking up from her console. “I see them. Coordinates locked. Transmitting now.”

  At the comm station, Robin Lefler shot an anxious glance at the nerve center’s main screen, which showed a brilliant, crimson barrage streaking up at them from the planet. “Let’s hope the Romulans come through.”

  Mac scowled. “They’d better.”

  “They won’t let us down,” said Edward Jellico, his clenched jaw betraying his fear even through the camouflage of his meticulously groomed white beard. “We’re the only hope they’ve got.”

  Changing course and speed—emergency evasive. The warning, heard only in the thoughts of Mac and Soleta, had come from McHenry, an extraordinary human who lived aboard the Excalibur, cocooned inside a nighinvulnerable null sphere from which he provided the ship with its near-limitless energy and borderline prescient navigation. Angling deflectors to shield aft quarter.

  Mac looked at Jellico. “Ed, check our tail!”

  Jellico turned and keyed commands into the panel behind him. “Incoming!”

  Thumbing open an intraship channel, Mac declared, “Brace for impact!”

  Excalibur pitched and yawed, and the command crew in its nerve center clung white-knuckle tight to their stations as the ship’s inertial dampers and artificial gravity modules struggled to compensate and then reset themselves.

  Pushing sweaty strands of his long, black hair from his scarred face, Mac slapped the side of his malfunctioning tactical display, which stuttered and went dark. “Grozit! Soleta! What just hit us?”

  “Secondary batteries, on the planet’s moon. Updating target profile—”

  “Make it quick,” Jellico said. “It’s locked on and charging up fast!”

  Mac sprang from his chair, too keyed up to stay seated. “Hard about! All power to aft shields and forward weapons!”

  Soleta looked up, her exquisite, angular face a mask of confusion. “What? Mac, what the hell are you—”

  “We’ll take out the secondary guns. Give Hiren the signal—now!” McHenry, give me everything you’ve got—we’re about to need it.

  McHenry’s telepathic voice was calm and certain. Ready, Captain.

  Excalibur’s impulse engines filled the ship with an almost musical droning, the product of a resonant frequency traveling through its spaceframe. Mac relished the steady vibrations traveling up his legs; they made him feel almost like a living part of the ship, and in such brief moments he wondered if he understood even a fraction of what McHenry’s union with the Thallonian-built vessel must be like.

  Not even close, Captain.

  Just fly the ship, McHenry.

  An alert shrilled from Jellico’s console. He silenced it with the side of his fist. “All enemy guns are set to fire!” Then his eyes widened, and his voice pitched upward. “Romulan ships decloaking, bearing one-three-five mark two! They’re firing torpedoes at the artillery bases on the planet.”

  Mac made a fist and barely suppressed the urge to punch the air. “Fire!”

  The Excalibur’s forward cannons unleashed a fearsome barrage toward the Klingon border world’s solitary moon. Half a second later, a massive detonation flared on its surface. “Direct hit,” Soleta said. The firestorm faded from view in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing in its wake but barren wasteland. Looking up from her instruments, Soleta added, “Enemy firebase destroyed.”

  Jellico cracked a rare smile. “The Romulans did their bit. All gun installations on the surface have been neutralized.”

  “Good work, everyone. Soleta, arm torpedoes and lock onto our primary target. Robin… hail them.”

  Everyone carried out Mac’s orders. Lefler nodded. “I have them.”

  “On screen.” Mac stood as Lefler patched the subspace feed to the nerve center’s forward main viewer.

  The image of Tranome Sar’s cinnamon-hued surface, now scarred by dozens of mushroom clouds climbing into its upper atmosphere, was replaced by a signal from inside the massive anti-deuterium refinery on its surface. A gaunt, weather-beaten old Klingon squinted at Mac, then bared his jagged teeth in a mirthless grin and expressed a contempt beyond measure in a single, rasped word: “You!”

  “That’s right, K’mtok: me.”

  The refinery boss furrowed his thick, ash-colored brow. “Don’t think you can extort us into refueling you or your Romulan lapdogs.”

  Try as he might, Mac couldn’t purge the mockery from his tone. “We’re not here to raid your refinery, K’mtok.” He smirked. “We’re here to blow it up.” A single nod to Soleta, and she began locking the Excalibur’s weapons on target. Mac looked back at K’mtok. “I’m giving you and your crew fifteen minutes to evacuate the refinery and leave in that empty freighter parked in low orbit.”

  K’mtok narrowed his eyes, clearly suspecting treachery. “That freighter is unarmed. Once aboard, we would be defenseless.”

  “You’re already defenseless. At least on the freighter you’ll be mobile and able to swear your revenge. But if it makes you feel better, I swear that the freighter will be given safe passage away from here.” He nodded to Jellico. “Start the countdown.” Then, to K’mtok, he added, “Fifteen minutes. Anyone still in the refinery after that is going to have a really bad day.”

  “You’ll pay for this, you filthy petaQ!”

  “So you keep telling me. Fourteen minutes and fifty-three seconds. Excalibur out.” He nodded at Lefler, who terminated the transmission, then stood and said to Jellico, “Let me know as soon as that freighter breaks orbit. Soleta, if it leaves before time’s up, blow the refinery early. Robin, remind our Romulan friends not to fire on that freighter. When I promise safe passage, I mean it.”

  Minutes and seconds bled away, until, with less than thirty seconds remaining in the countdown, the Klingon freighter broke orbit at full impulse, on a bearing away from the Klingon-Romulan border, back into the heart of Klingon space. Mac watched the ship shrink to a pinpoint on the forward viewscreen, and then he looked at Jellico. “Any Klingons still on the surface?”

  “Not a one. The refinery’s deserted.”

  “Good. Signal the fleet to cloak and meet us at the rendezvous point.”

  “Hang on,” Lefler said, swiveling her chair away from her post to face Mac and Jellico. “We’re not just leaving behind all that fuel, are we? There must be enough down there to power this fleet for the next nine—” A brilliant flash from the main viewscreen forced her to shut her eyes, and she raised her arm to shield her face. After the blinding glare faded, Lefler stared in slackjawed horror at the screen but said nothing.

  Mac didn’t need to look back to know what he would find: the refinery vanished and most of Tranome Sar’s atmosphere blasted away by a massive antimatter explosion. “The Klingons had no intention of letting us capture that valuable a resource,” Mac said to Lefler. “Standard operating procedure in a situation like this is either to defend it to the death or booby-trap it to prevent it from being used by the enemy.” He stole a glance at the smoldering devastation on the screen, and he sighed. “At least they saved us a torpedo.” He thumbed the switch for the ship’s PA long enough to say, “All hands, secure from general quarters,” and then he silently attuned his thoughts to address the ship’s true master: Take us out of here, McHenry—maximum warp.

  As you command, Mac.

  Six hours later, Mac sat at the head of the table inside the Excalibur’s conference room, flanked on his right by Soleta and on his left by Jellico. None of the three stood as the door opened and a line of Romulan starship commanders entered, led by Hiren, their former praetor.
Trailing them were a handful of Xenexian captains, whom Mac had promoted whenever he and the Romulans had captured Alliance ships to add to their armada. Hiren claimed the seat next to Soleta’s, and the other commanders settled in around the table, on which sat several bowls of fruit.

  As the last of the Romulans sat down, Mac leaned forward. “Who can guess why I’ve asked you all here today?” His rhetorical question was met with blank stares and averted gazes. “Hit-and-run tactics can take us only so far. We need to think bigger if we want to make real progress against the Alliance.”

  Hiren steepled his fingers on the table in front of him. “I disagree, Captain. The biggest mistake we could make right now would be to overextend ourselves.” He looked around the room, directing his next remarks to the other commanders. “With patience, we could expel the Klingons and their Cardassian lackeys from Romulan space in less than a year.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Jellico grumbled. He raised his voice as he continued. “The only reason we’ve made headway against the Klingons is that most of their forces have been tied up fighting the Talarians.”

  “Who have inflicted serious losses on the Alliance,” Hiren said. He plucked a large, ruby-colored fruit from the bowl nearest him and started peeling away its rind to reveal the glistening pink flesh underneath. “Their divided attention presents us with an opportunity.”

  Soleta bowed her head slightly. “True. But Edward is correct. When the Klingons once again make their conquest of Romulan space a priority, we will almost certainly see our recent victories reversed. It is only a matter of time.”

  “By then we will have expanded our recruitment efforts,” Hiren said, popping a wedge of peeled fruit into his mouth. Chewing, he added, “We’ll be ready to whip those Klingon animals back to their wilderness.”

  Mac shook his head slowly. “No, you won’t. You need to face facts, Hiren. We’ve commandeered almost every available ship in your former empire, and we’ve pressed into service every warm body we could find. We’re as strong as we’re ever going to get—but it won’t be enough to stop what’s coming. If you’re serious about helping me save your people, you need to stop thinking in terms of reclaiming what was, and start dealing with your situation as it is.”