Rise Like Lions Read online

  The mood in the room chilled as the gathered Romulan commanders bristled at Mac’s implication. Hiren set down his half-eaten fruit, took a deep breath, and clenched his fists on the tabletop. His voice was quiet and sharp, like an assassin’s blade. “We will not abandon what is rightfully ours, Calhoun.”

  “I’m not saying you should. But if you don’t stop being so provincial about its defense, you will lose it, and a lot sooner than you think. The truth is, we’re outnumbered. So, unless we make some new allies, and soon, we’re screwed.”

  Temolok, one of the senior warbird commanders, piped up. “And to whom should we turn? Our old foes, the Patriarchy? The First Federation?”

  “The Terran Rebellion,” Soleta said.

  Hiren let slip a derisive snort. “Don’t be absurd. The Terrans are as good as dead. Once the Alliance finishes with the Talarians, they’ll wipe out what’s left of those pathetic rabble-rousers.”

  Calhoun spoke softly, his focus on Hiren intense. “Not if we join them.”

  The former praetor of the defunct Romulan Star Empire chortled. It was a grim, world-weary sound. “Are you mad, Captain? The Terran Rebellion is over a hundred light-years away, on the far side of Alliance territory.”

  Jellico interjected, “So what? Your ships have cloaks, and the Excalibur is a stealth ship. We can outrun anything the Alliance sends after us.”

  “My point is not to ask how we would reach them,” Hiren replied, with more condescension than he would dare employ when speaking to Mac. “My point is that once we deploy so far from our own space, we will have all but ceded it to the enemy.” He glared at Mac. “And that is entirely unacceptable.”

  Mac fought to rein in his temper. Behind his bloodred veil of anger, he heard McHenry’s telepathic voice: I sense that you wish me to arm Excalibur’s internal defenses and terminate the Romulan commanders. Shall I commence firing?

  No, McHenry, thank you. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. I suspect that would cause far more problems than it would solve. Placing his palms flat on the table, he said to Hiren, “I’ve never made any secret of my agenda to join with the Terran Rebellion. And in case you’ve forgotten, you swore to defer to my judgment on all matters pertaining to this fleet. My fleet.”

  “I said I’d lost the taste for power, and that I was willing to defer to your authority.” He looked at the Romulan commanders, several of whom nodded in Hiren’s direction. A sly smile tugged at his mouth when he looked back at Mac. “Lost appetites can be regained. Past indulgences can be revoked.” His mien darkened, and a note of menace crept into his voice. “Most of your fleet consists of Romulan warships and support vessels, many of them crewed exclusively by my people. While we are, understandably, grateful to you for rescuing as many as you did when the Alliance destroyed Romulus, our gratitude doesn’t extend so far as to abandon the remainder of our empire merely on your say-so.”

  The challenge provoked nothing more from Mac than a slow nod.

  McHenry silently alerted Mac, I have the information you asked me to find.

  Well done. Start using it. Mac reclined his chair, set his hands on the armrests, and looked at Hiren. “Should I interpret your refusal to obey my orders as a ‘vote of no confidence’?”

  “If you like.”

  Eyeing the other Romulans in the room, Mac asked, “What about the rest of you? Can I see a show of hands? Who agrees with Hiren?” One by one, every Romulan except Soleta—who, Mac reminded himself, was half Vulcan, and therefore didn’t deserve to be lumped in with her countrymen—raised his or her hand. Mac frowned. “All right. I’ve heard your position. Here’s mine.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood. Leaning forward on his knuckles, he fixed Hiren with a baleful stare. “This ship—and, by extension, this fleet—is not a democracy. We don’t take votes, and I don’t give a targ’s ass whether we achieve consensus. I give orders, and you follow them. That’s how it works. Anyone who doesn’t like it is free to leave. But ask yourself this, Hiren: How long will you and your people last without me and mine?”

  “Longer than you will without the safe haven of Romulan space.” Hiren held up a hand to stifle any replies from Mac or his senior personnel. “Let’s not be hasty about this, Calhoun. I still believe our forces are stronger united than separate. Splitting up now doesn’t benefit either of us. Let me suggest a compromise.”

  “No.”

  Soleta touched Mac’s arm. “Maybe we should hear him—”

  “No,” Mac repeated, with more force. “I’m not making any deals. Hiren, if you want to take your fleet and go home, be my guest. But if you want to stay and be part of this fleet, you and your men need to submit to my authority. I won’t be threatened, second-guessed, or extorted.” He shot a withering glance at the other Romulans. “And just in case any of you are thinking you can pledge your loyalty now and stab me in the back later, you might want to take a moment to check in with your ships.” He motioned for them to do so. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  The Romulans traded bemused looks, and then they began muttering into their wrist-mounted communicators. A soft chatter of comm traffic, of harsh whispers and tinny, filtered replies, filled the conference room. Mac waited until all his guests had finished verifying the current status of their respective ships.

  “By now, you should all be aware that each of your vessels has targeted one of the others, and that your crews are locked out of all command functions.” Mac smiled. “I can just as easily turn your ships’ intruder countermeasures against your crews, any time I wish. Remember that the next time you get the urge to mutiny.”

  Hiren quaked with rage. “What kind of treachery is this?”

  “The kind I resort to when I suspect my so-called allies are going to betray me. Now, let’s cut to the heart of it. Do you accept my authority or not?”

  Seething but visibly diminished, Hiren mumbled, “Yes, Captain.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes… I accept your absolute authority over this fleet.”

  “Good. I’m glad we sorted that out.”

  The ex-praetor forced out bitter words. “May I make a request, Captain?”

  “You may.”

  “Before you take the fleet out of Romulan space to join the Terrans, might you consider making one more major tactical strike against the Alliance in the Acamar Sector—to replenish our supplies and provisions and delay the enemy’s inevitable counterstrike against the Romulan colonies there?”

  Mac gave a half-nod. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Dismissed.” Mac remained standing as he watched the procession of ship commanders leave the conference room, once again following Hiren. When the door slid closed behind the last of them, Mac dropped heavily back into his chair.

  Jellico folded his arms. “That was some stunt you pulled, turning all those ships against each other. Care to tell me how you did it?”

  Mac cracked a wan smile. “Maybe some other time, Ed.” He caught a sly glance from Soleta, who knew that Mac had enlisted McHenry’s help, by having the psionic prodigy lift the various starship captains’ command codes from their minds and use them to usurp control of their vessels over a subspace channel.

  Soleta cocked one eyebrow in curiosity. “Orders, Captain?”

  “Find our next target,” Mac said. “Something we can use to hobble the Alliance and keep them busy licking their wounds while we join the rebellion.”

  2

  The Messenger

  Miles “Smiley” O’Brien faced his closest adviser and fellow rebellion general, Michael Eddington, across the situation table in Terok Nor’s Operations Center. Eddington was the portrait of calm. Tall, thin, and soft-spoken, he was the polar opposite of stout, irascible O’Brien. With a few gingerly taps, O’Brien highlighted part of the station diagram on the tabletop display between them. “The outer sections are vulnerable. Let’s move their occupants to the inner edge of the Habitat Ring
and gut those areas for parts.”

  “That causes more problems than it solves.” As usual, Eddington pulled no punches. “The Habitat Ring is already too crowded, and we won’t get anything useful out of those sections except cables and some plasma relays.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” O’Brien snapped. Of all the people who had flocked to the Terran Rebellion over the years, Eddington was the only one O’Brien felt he could really trust to always tell him the unvarnished truth—but that didn’t mean O’Brien had to like it. “I don’t give a damn how crowded the ring is. There’ll be plenty of room after we’re gone.” Noting that his raised voice had prompted anxious looks from the other senior personnel manning the Operations Center, O’Brien took a deep breath before adding in a more subdued tone, “Repairing the fleet has to be our top priority, Michael.”

  Eddington took a second to consider his reply. “I agree with you, Miles. But I don’t think we should be so quick to write off the station. The move to the wormhole inflicted only minor structural damage, and the deflectors are intact. It’s still a highly defensible base of operations.”

  “No, it’s a damned target, the first thing the Alliance will shoot at.” O’Brien sighed, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of years on the losing end of a war. “We’re low on torpedoes, half our phaser banks are broken, and we don’t have the time or manpower for another raid on the Cardassians’ weapons depots. I think our best bet is to redistribute what we have left to the fleet and retreat to the Badlands before the Alliance comes back for a rematch.”

  “Miles, most of what we can salvage from the station will be useless to the fleet. Half the components are incompatible with anything non-Cardassian, and the rest will take more effort to adapt than they’ll be worth. We’d be gutting a valuable resource for no good reason.” He called up a new screen of data on the tabletop. “Since we can’t fix the engines on the Rescorla, why not salvage it for parts and use its weapons to repair the station?”

  “The Rescorla’s parts and munitions are already earmarked for the fleet.”

  Eddington nodded, not in accord but out of frustration. “All right. If we’re committed to abandoning the station, can I make a few recommendations?”

  “By all means.”

  “First, we should move it away from the wormhole.”

  O’Brien frowned in confusion and felt his forehead crease. “Why?”

  “To hide the wormhole from the Alliance. It’s a potentially useful tactical asset, not to mention a point of major religious significance to the Bajorans.”

  O’Brien rolled his eyes. In the weeks since Iliana Ghemor, a Cardassian and former agent of the Obsidian Order, had returned from the wormhole—after being pulled into it beside her counterpart and the Kira Nerys from the alternate universe—the people of Bajor had become engulfed by an intense religious fervor. They had started calling Ghemor “the Emissary of the Prophets.” He’d never before heard of these Prophets, but apparently they were the deities of an ancient mythology, and the Bajorans believed they lived inside the wormhole.

  “I’ll concede the second part,” O’Brien said. “What makes you think the wormhole is tactically valuable?”

  “As far as we can tell, the Alliance still doesn’t know it exists.” Eddington called up a star map on the tabletop screen and began drawing tactical diagrams. “If we stage a fleet on the far side, we can fool the Alliance’s long-range recon into thinking we’re weaker than we really are. Meanwhile, we’ll use cloaked subspace radio buoys on either side to maintain communications. They’ll size their assault force based on what they think is the minimum necessary to ensure victory. Then we’ll lure the Alliance fleet into a battle around the station, and—when they think they have us—we’ll call in our reinforcements and blast the Alliance fleet to bits.”

  Knowing that Eddington was a shrewd tactician, O’Brien took a moment to study the details of his colleague’s plan. “It’s a good idea. But it has one flaw.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re assuming the Alliance will continue its past tactic of minimum engagement. They’ve done nothing but escalate this conflict since it started. When they finish their war with the Talarians, they’ll come for us—and it won’t be with the bare minimum. The last time they tried that, the Klingons lost their flagship, the Negh’Var. Martok won’t tolerate another defeat like that. The next time the Alliance comes here, it’ll be to crush us. They’ll hit us with everything they can.” He tapped the tabletop display and dispelled Eddington’s schematics, leaving the screen blank. “By the time that happens, I plan to be long gone.”

  Eddington seemed to have run out of counterarguments. O’Brien was set to move on to other pressing business when chief of security Luther Sloan joined them. “Excuse me, but there’s something you’ll want to see.” He patched in a feed from the sensor console, and the oval holoframe suspended high overhead flickered to life and showed a small Bajoran spacecraft heading toward Terok Nor. Sloan nodded at it. “We picked it up about ninety seconds ago. Its shields are up, and it’s following the stealth trajectory we used to use to visit the planet without being observed by the Alliance. But no flights are scheduled today.”

  O’Brien and Eddington traded worried glances, and then O’Brien looked over his shoulder toward Ezri Tigan at the tactical station. “Hail them.”

  The young Trill woman pushed a lock of her wild black hair from her face with one hand while operating her console with the other. “Bajoran vessel, this is Terok Nor. Identify yourself and your passengers.” Several seconds passed without a response. Tigan looked at O’Brien for guidance. “Lock phasers?”

  Before O’Brien could answer, a female voice crackled over the subspace audio channel. “Terok Nor, this is the Bajoran transport Yolja, requesting permission to dock.”

  O’Brien’s expression of worry became one of suspicion. “Transport Yolja, identify your passengers, or you will be fired upon.”

  Eddington looked askance at O’Brien and whispered, “That seems extreme.”

  “That ship could be loaded with explosives, for all we know.” Anxious, O’Brien folded his arms. “Ezri, stand by to raise shields.”

  “Terok Nor, this is transport Yolja. Can we switch to a secure channel?”

  O’Brien nodded at Tigan, who keyed in the commands. “Encryption’s up,” O’Brien said. “Go ahead, Yolja.”

  “This is Iliana Ghemor. I’ve come to talk with O’Brien. It’s important.”

  “First, you’ll have to lower your shields,” O’Brien said.

  Ghemor sounded annoyed. “Sorry. Force of habit. Shields down.”

  Cocking one eyebrow, O’Brien looked at Sloan for confirmation. The lean, fair-haired man checked his console, then nodded at O’Brien. “One life sign, Cardassian female. The ship’s clean.”

  That satisfied O’Brien for the moment. “Transport Yolja, dock at airlock three. Terok Nor out.” He closed the channel, then snapped orders as he moved toward the lift. “Michael, with me. Luther, clear the corridors near the airlock. Ezri, have Keiko meet our guest and bring her to the wardroom.”

  Iliana Ghemor had hardly expected a hero’s welcome upon her return to Terok Nor, but she certainly hadn’t anticipated being treated like a prisoner.

  The station’s first officer, a slender human woman named Keiko Ishikawa, had met Ghemor at the airlock, backed up by a trio of armed rebels led by the one named Sloan. Ishikawa led her away from the airlock, with Sloan following a few paces behind Ghemor, his blaster drawn and pointed squarely at her back. By the time they arrived at the wardroom, Ghemor didn’t know whether she was being marched to a parley or an execution. Though she hadn’t wronged the rebellion during her last visit to the station, she knew all too well that people had an unlimited capacity for irrational behavior in times of war.

  Despite reports Ghemor had heard of the station being overcrowded, the corridors seemed deserted. Then she noticed fresh boot stains on the deck, bits of trash l
ittering nooks along the passageways, and a faint odor of unwashed bodies, and she deduced that the corridors through which she was being led likely had been packed with people only minutes earlier. A sardonic smile lifted the corner of her mouth. They must have cleared them just for me. How considerate.

  Ishikawa stopped beside the wardroom door and pressed its visitor signal. “We’re here,” she said.

  O’Brien’s voice squawked from the speaker beside the control panel. “Enter.” The door slid open, and Ishikawa motioned Ghemor inside.

  Standing on the far side of the meeting table were O’Brien and Eddington. Ghemor strode in, followed closely by Ishikawa and Sloan, who shut and locked the door. The svelte Cardassian woman stopped directly across from the two rebellion leaders and nodded politely. “General O’Brien. General Eddington. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Have a seat,” Eddington said, gesturing toward a chair. He and O’Brien settled into their chairs, so Ghemor did likewise.

  O’Brien skipped the pleasantries. “What do you want?”

  “I came to bring you important news, and to make a request.”

  Eddington offered her a pained smile. “You’d better start with the news.”

  “Sixteen hours from now, Bajor will secede from the Alliance and abdicate its role as power broker and mediator between the Cardassian Union and the Klingon Empire.” Her pronouncement was met by wide-eyed stares.

  Ishikawa looked stunned. “How did this happen so quickly? I thought the Bajoran government was destroyed when the Intendant torpedoed Ashalla.”

  “Ironically,” Ghemor said, “the loss of the civilian government streamlined the political process. Opaka Sulan has been selected as the planet’s kai, or spiritual leader, and the senior members of her underground religion have come out of hiding to reconstitute the Vedek Assembly for the first time in centuries. In the absence of other leadership, they’ve become Bajor’s de facto government.”