Collateral Damage Read online

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  Publisher’s Notice

  The publisher has provided this ebook to you without Digital Rights Management (DRM) software applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This ebook is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this ebook, or make this ebook publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this ebook except to read it on your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this ebook you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: simonandschuster.biz/online_piracy_report.

  to dreams outgrown but never forgotten

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  This story’s prologue takes place in February 2381, a week after the end of the Borg Invasion (Star Trek Destiny).

  The events of the main portion of this story take place in January 2387, approximately eight weeks after the Enterprise’s mission to intercept the Nejamri generation ship (Star Trek: The Next Generation: Available Light) and ten weeks after the public exposure of Section 31’s crimes (Section 31: Control ).

  Charity begins at home—but if it ends there, what good is it?

  PROLOGUE February 2381

  It’s been seven days since my world died. Since it was murdered. Cut down like a mad cur, left to burn without a living soul to mourn its dead. Destroyed for no reason.

  From the top of Nausicaa’s highest mountain I look down upon a charred cinder. A blackened orb, silent and empty. A haze the color of rotting flesh lingers over the plains below. It matches the pallor of our once radiant skies, hidden now by a permanent blanket of brown dust and gray smoke ejected into our atmosphere by the Borg’s pitiless barrage.

  Where I should see the city of my birth, the land of my fathers, the home of my family… all I see is a smoldering crater, its nadir still aglow with the green fires that made it. A smoky wound in the landscape. An empty space, both literally and figuratively.

  I want to scream. To howl out my anguish and my fury. But grief steals my voice, chokes me like a tourniquet on my throat. My mandibles quiver. My eyes burn with rageful tears, but I need to stay strong. I am all my people have left. If I am weak, the last of us perish.

  I cannot falter. I must not fear. I must find a way forward.

  Behind me, others succumb to their grief. The women and the younglings I let weep. The men bellow their voices raw, as if they hope their shouts can pierce our world’s deathly shroud. They need this, to know they poured out their tegoli to the Four Winds and were not heard.

  Our gods will never hear our cries again. They have abandoned us, or they are dead. Either way, they no longer matter. All that I know now to be true is that we are alone.

  And that I should have been here.

  I should have died beside my mates and our brood. Yawa, can you ever forgive me? Baru? Do you hear the regret in my voice? I wish I hadn’t lived to see a day without you both. Without our willful, passionate younglings. Were you grateful I was offworld? Did you hope I would avenge you? Or did you leave this world cursing my name? Calling me a coward?

  I swear on your tegoli that I am no coward. Had I been here, I would have shown the Borg the very essence of guramba. I would have made them pay in blood for this horror.

  That’s more than what the Federation did—which was nothing.

  Not a single ship came to defend Nausicaa.

  For all their big talk, where was the Federation when we needed them? The Borg were their enemy. A nightmare they spawned. A catastrophe they unleashed on the galaxy.

  Where was the Federation when our world was being laid waste?

  Where was the Federation as our monuments were vaporized, as every trace of our history, our culture, our literature, our music, our heritage was disintegrated? They were in retreat, scrambling to protect their precious Earth.

  The great and vaunted Starfleet was running scared while the Borg churned my world’s oceans into sludge with the burning ashes of six billion Nausicaans.

  Now there’s nothing left. Not a single survivor on the planet’s surface.

  The only Nausicaans left in the galaxy were those who were offworld when the Borg arrived. A handful of rogues, scavengers, and independent merchants. The closest thing our people had to a military died with this planet. Along with our fractious government and every last trace of wealth we possessed as a civilization.

  We have always been a proud species. Strong. Independent. Fearless.

  But now there are so few of us. One bad decision could drive us extinct.

  I grew up knowing that Nausicaans never ask for anything. Not for help, or favors, or mercy. What we want, we take. What we have, we keep. That is our way. But how do we take back our own past? Our own identities? Thousands of cycles of history, mythology, music, art, literature, poetry, and faith… all dead and gone.

  All that we were. Destroyed in a flash of light and heat.

  Now the last of us are adrift. Too proud to beg. Too weak to conquer. The Nausicaan people have become debris swept away by time’s cruel and endless current.

  Killed for no reason. Not because we had something the Borg wanted, or represented something they feared. But because our star system was situated between the Azure Nebula, the Borg’s arrival point in the Alpha Quadrant, and their ultimate target, the Sol system.

  Earth.

  Our world was murdered because it was on the Borg’s most direct route to Earth.

  My people never challenged the Borg. They never showed any interest in us, or in our technology. They left us in peace, and we did the same. Until they met the Federation. That was when everything changed. Once the Federation and its Starfleet made contact with the Borg, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

  Always the same story with Starfleet. So superior. So sure of themselves.

  And now billions of my people are dead. Exterminated like vermin. And on other worlds, the same sad story, over and over again. Tens of billions burned alive, every last one of them a sacrifice on the blood-soaked altar of the Federation’s arrogance.

  Some want to blame the Borg for this atrocity. But the Borg are gone. Absorbed into the Caeliar gestalt. Absolved of responsibility, all their sins forgiven.

  So be it. I know who’s really to blame.

  I turn away from the endless fields of destruction and face the few dozen lives that are now my sacred responsibility to defend in a brutal, uncaring universe. “Enough!” My voice is hoarse. I point toward my ship, the Seovong, which sits parked on a small alpine plateau nearby, its aft landing ramp open. “We go.”

  My first officer Kradech sidles over and advises me in a confidential tone. “Kinogar? The women and younglings need more time.”

  He has always been less hard-hearted than me. I shake my head.

  “Weep for an hour, weep for a day. When our tears run dry, our world will still be dead.” I tilt my head toward the ship. “Get them on board.”

  I watch, my expression blank but my heart howling, as Kradech and my other trusted men shepherd the handful of our grieving kin back inside the ship. Some of them clutch tiny mementos of our lives-that-were; one lucky woman has a book written in our native tongue. I spy a youngling who has a woodwind instrument that she might not know how to play but has been told nonetheless to treasure and keep safe.

  As far as I know, we are all that remain of the Nausicaan people.

  For their sakes, I will make the Federation pay for all that we have lost.

  Holding back my burning tears, I board my ship and take to the stars, leaving behind the corpse of my world—and with it, a piece of my tegol.

  JANUARY 2387

  1

  The collar of Jean-Luc Picard’s dress uniform was as snug as a noose against his throat. He slipped his index finger behind it and gave a gentle tug in search of some slack. I don’t recall this being quite so tight. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that he had drawn the attention of his wife, Doctor Beverly Crusher, who sat beside him in the shuttlecraft Galileo. He let go of his collar and turned his gaze forward to see the towers and spires of San Francisco slip past outside.

  Crusher also wore her dress uniform. Picard had reminded her that there was no need for her to endure this discomfort, but she had insisted. “We’re in this together, Jean-Luc,” she had said an hour earlier, while they were dressing in their quarters on the Enterprise.

  I can only hope that doesn’t turn out to be true.

  They had not spoken since boarding the Galileo. Their flight down from Earth orbit had been brief but fraught with anxiety about what awaited them at its end. This was a journey they had postponed for as long as possible—first with excuses, and then with a mission far beyond the Federation’s border. But the time for delays and evasions was past.

  I can’t run from this any longer. It’s time to account for my actions.

  Members of the Federation Council had been demanding Picard’s presence for several weeks, ever since the public exposure of Section 31—and, with the uncovering of all its crimes,
foreign and domestic, the revelation that Picard and several flag officers of Starfleet had played key roles in the coerced removal from office of Federation president Min Zife over seven years earlier. What had shocked Picard as much as anyone had been the news that Section 31 had taken the additional step of executing Zife as well as his top advisors immediately afterward.

  If only I had known… That thought led him nowhere. When he revisited those fearful, violent days, and tried to imagine what he might have done differently, he found himself at a loss. The Tezwa crisis had been some of the darkest days of his Starfleet career. Millions of lives lost, a planet and a people left in ruins, all for naught. He had hoped never to think on it again, yet its horrors had chased him everywhere since, as inescapable as his own shadow.

  A shift in the shuttlecraft’s artificial gravity and a downward pitch of its bow alerted him and Beverly of what was coming a few seconds before their pilot, Lieutenant Allison Scagliotti, said over her shoulder, “Captain, we’re on final approach to Starfleet Command.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  He shifted his hand just far enough to link his fingers with Crusher’s.

  She reciprocated the gesture, a small but significant show of support.

  Over the Galileo’s comm, Picard heard the voice of a flight control officer at Starfleet Command give final instructions. Just as Picard had expected, the shuttle had been directed to the landing pad nearest the office of Starfleet’s top-ranking officer, Chief Admiral Leonard James Akaar. It made sense, and not just for its convenience; that pad was secured from external observation, and no nongovernmental civilians were permitted there.

  In other words, no press.

  Galileo touched down with barely a bump. The droning of its impulse engines fell to a soft purr but did not go quiet. It had orders to return to the Enterprise as soon as Picard and Crusher were delivered safely to Starfleet Command.

  Scagliotti replied to Starfleet Command’s flight control officer, “Command, Galileo is secure. Passengers going ashore now. Requesting clearance for immediate departure.”

  “Clearing you a lane. Stand by, Galileo.”

  Picard and Crusher unfastened their safety harnesses and rose from their seats. Scagliotti opened the shuttlecraft’s portside hatch ahead of their approach, and then the young woman swiveled her chair to face them as they disembarked. Tears shimmered in her green eyes as she tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear. With hope and sincerity she said, “Good luck, sir.”

  What could he say? He didn’t want to give her false hopes.

  He acknowledged her kind wish with a small nod. “Thank you.”

  And then he led his wife off the shuttlecraft, into the blinding glare of a crisp, clear winter morning in San Francisco, California.

  Side by side they walked across the landing platform to the double doors that led inside Starfleet Command. As soon as they were clear of the platform’s red zone, they heard the Galileo’s engine drone rise in pitch. Neither Picard nor Crusher looked back, but he saw the ascending shuttlecraft reflected in the mirror-perfect façade of Starfleet Command’s windows.

  The double doors parted ahead of them as they approached. A tall Starfleet officer stepped out from the other side to greet them—a youthful-looking male Pacifican, with a liquid-respiration mask over his nose and mouth, prominent webbing between the long, slender digits of his hands, and elegant multicolored fins extending from the top and sides of his head. As he neared to conversational range, Picard saw that the man wore a lieutenant commander’s rank insignia, and he spoke through a special translator module built into his respirator mask.

  “Greetings, Captain Picard.” He faced Crusher. “Welcome, Doctor Crusher.” He gestured toward the open doors behind him. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Boyelip, senior aide to Chief Admiral Akaar. You’re both expected. Follow me, please.”

  Boyelip turned and led them inside.

  Far from a hero’s welcome. Not that I had any reason to expect one. Not this time.

  In the sterile white corridors, they passed officers of various ranks, species, and genders on their short walk to the office of Starfleet’s ranking admiral. Picard was certain that he felt the weight of everyone’s stares as he did his best to avoid acknowledging them. Eschewing eye contact, he’d learned, was the key to dodging unwelcome queries. So he did his best to keep his focus in front of him, on where he was going, what he was doing, whom he was talking to.

  But still he felt the stares. The looks of accusation. Everywhere he went. And their weight grew with each passing day. Soon it would be too much to bear. He had to shed this burden.

  Boyelip opened the door to Akaar’s office, but he remained outside as Picard and Crusher entered, and then he closed the door behind them.

  Akaar stood at his floor-to-ceiling window, his broad back to Picard and Crusher. The tall, white-haired Capellan—who was still well muscled, despite being over one hundred twenty years old—gazed out at the beauty of San Francisco Bay. He spoke with the solemnity of a Bajoran vedek reading a prayer for the dead. “So it begins.” He looked at Picard. “You will never know how dearly I’d hoped this day would never come.”

  Picard had traveled too far to succumb to maudlin impulses. His only succor now was to be found in the rituals of protocol. He stepped forward and said the words he had rehearsed so many times over the last eight weeks, in preparation for this moment.

  “Admiral, per your order and at the request of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General, I present myself as a material witness in the ongoing criminal inquest into the actions of Section Thirty-One during the Tezwa crisis. I am prepared to offer testimony regarding my role in those events, and to take full responsibility for my actions.”

  Akaar absorbed that news with admirable sangfroid. Then he looked at Crusher. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Doctor?”

  “I’m here to do what he won’t.”

  “Which is?”

  “Look out for his best interests.”

  “Then that makes two of us.” The admiral gestured at the guest chairs in front of his curved desk. “Please, sit.” He settled into his own chair and waited for them to be seated before he continued. “Captain, I appreciate your respect for the formalities. I will see to it that your gestures are properly noted and logged for the JAG’s files.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.”

  “You’re more than welcome. Now, let me tell you why I insisted that you present yourself to me, rather than directly to the JAG. I did my best to keep you and the Enterprise out of the inquiry’s reach during its early phases. I’d hoped they might find enough to be satisfied without dragging your name through the mud. That hasn’t been the case.

  “The people of the Federation are understandably spooked by the discovery that they and their ancestors lived for more than two centuries in a surveillance state run by a sociopathic artificial superintelligence. And that, I’m sure, would have been the greatest of their concerns were it not for the exposure of documents alleging that Starfleet led a coup against the president who won the Dominion War, and then turned a blind eye to his murder.

  “I did all I could to shield you from the media shitstorm these past few weeks, but my ability to give you cover is at an end.”

  Picard nodded. “I expected as much, Admiral. And I’m prepared to face the music.”

  “Hold that thought. Because your predicament is worse than you think.” Akaar picked up a padd, called up a file, and passed it across the desk to Picard so that he could peruse its contents. “At oh-nine-hundred this morning, Federation attorney general Phillipa Louvois petitioned the Federation Council and President zh’Tarash to remand all Starfleet personnel involved in the Section Thirty-One inquiry to the civilian justice system, rather than permit Starfleet to conduct its own separate proceedings under courts-martial, as required by the SCMJ.”

  That news made Picard sit up, alarmed. It stank of a witch hunt. “And?”

  “I pushed back. Hard. The legal autonomy of Starfleet is a privilege I am not willing to surrender, and there is no legal precedent for such a shift in authority. The good news is, the Federation Supreme Court rejected Louvois’s request. The catch is, this means our official inquiry must be absolutely beyond reproach. Do you understand what I’m saying, Captain?”