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  Now it saved her life.

  She was finally drinking a cup of coffee beside Lieutenant Moran in transporter room six when the first photon torpedoes impacted Enterprise—and she and the technician were ready at the control station when Worf’s urgent call was piped in. But before Moran could start working the interface, two bipedal figures appeared on the transporter pads, unbidden. Their appearance was faster and flashier than the usual materialization effect, and it took Chen’s eyes a moment to focus on the intruders.

  They were dressed head-to-toe in black, from their form­fitting uniforms with armored breastplates to their helmets with darkened visors. Chen couldn’t see their faces, and she wasn’t looking, anyway—as both held disruptor rifles. The new­comers raised them in the direction of Chen and Moran and fired.

  Their shots struck their intended target: not the officers, but rather the transporter control interface before them. The console exploded, producing a wave of sparking debris that threw Chen and Moran backward off their feet. Grasping at the wall, trying to stand, Chen saw the intruders training their weapons upward at the imaging scanners on the transporter room’s overhead. More blasts, and another explosion. Heedless of the sparks showering down on them, they fired again—

  —and now Chen thanked her lucky stars for being on the Klingons’ shipboard honor detail instead of down on Gamaral, because while weapons were forbidden in the Circle of Triumph, she had been able to conceal a type-1 phaser under her dress uniform. Righting herself, she drew a bead and fired into the smoke. The phaser shot struck the chest of one of the invaders, glancing off his armored midsection and knocking him a step backward; the outfit clearly offered some level of protection. She dialed up the setting.

  The other intruder—Chen thought she was female—turned from her mission of destruction and faced her. Chen fired again, but the intruder shrugged it off. Not high enough. The invader pointed her disruptor in Chen’s direction and seemed to hesitate for a moment.

  In that moment, deliverance came—once again, as a consequence of Chen’s duties. The members of Chen’s honor escort detail, awaiting their next assignment elsewhere on the same deck, had responded to the noise and were in the corridor, firing through the now-open door at the armored figures. Struck by three phaser blasts at once, the female intruder tripped backward.

  Her partner returned fire—and found someone in the hall, as evidenced by the horrific bellow from outside. But the shots from outside only intensified, and the female intruder touched a control on her wrist. White halos appeared, whisking the two away as fast as they had arrived.

  The entire episode had taken less than fifteen seconds. Chen fell to her knees, unsure why the intruder had not fired on her but thankful nonetheless. She looked over to find Moran on the deck: unhurt, but clearly startled. Transporter rooms didn’t see a lot of action. As the security officers rushed in, Chen slapped her combadge. “Bridge, this is transporter room six. We’ve just been boarded!”

  Konya responded. “We know. Other teams have hit every personnel transporter room—they’re now going after the emergency ones. There are battles everywhere.”

  Chen did a double take—and Moran, mesmerized by the smoking wreckage around her, said what they both were thinking. “That’s—that’s sixteen rooms!”

  I guess they brought friends, Chen thought. She remembered Worf’s call—and stood. “Konya, did someone else beam up Worf and Kahless?”

  “Negative. Shields are up. We’re working on a way to—”

  A barrage shook Enterprise, drowning out the rest—but Chen had heard enough. “Find us a room that’s still intact,” Chen said, heading for the door. “Even if it’s in the middle of one of those battles!”

  Twelve

  THE CIRCLE OF TRIUMPH

  GAMARAL

  Immediately after Worf had bolted toward Kahless, Picard quickly sent Šmrhová the code word initiating the panic scramble: ALAMO. That would lead to the deactivation of the transport inhibitors, he knew, allowing evacuations—but he had more immediate concerns. Wobbly old Kiv’ota still stood on his platform of honor, petrified by the gunfire around him.

  Without thinking twice, Picard scaled the few steps from the gallery to the pedestal. “My lord, get down!” the captain said, reaching out for the Klingon. Picard grabbed hold of a piece of robe and yanked.

  It was just in time: a blast that would have incinerated Kiv’ota seared the hem of his garment instead. But it put the old man’s body into motion, and Kiv’ota tumbled backward off the dais, landing hard at the foot of the stone steps. Picard rushed to drag him fully behind the platform as more shots blazed past.

  Looking to either side, he saw the other attackers; they had taken similar positions in the nooks between the thirteen observation galleries. The Kruge family members’ mutual disdain for one another had led to this: a single, continuous seating area wouldn’t have offered the snipers the same crannies. As it was, the ceaseless disruptor fire meant Picard couldn’t look past the platform to see what had become of Worf and Kahless.

  There was only one thing to do: exit the gallery down the steps that led from the arena and out into Gamaral’s night. But Picard found Kiv’ota unconscious from the fall. With orange fire blazing overhead, Picard saw no other choice. He slipped his arms around the Klingon’s chest and heaved, dragging him backward toward the rock stairs. It wouldn’t be easy—or comfortable for Kiv’ota—but at least the old man’s head wouldn’t strike the steps on the way down.

  Where the devil is that security team? Picard wondered as he dragged the dead weight. But he never stopped pulling.

  • • •

  It seemed to Worf that the whole universe outside Kahless’s waiting area had descended into madness. He had hailed Enterprise only to be told that the ship was under attack, shields raised, and unable to transport anyone. Then he had tried the surface security team and gotten no one for long seconds, until he finally heard, “We’re trying to reach you. Stand by. Šmrhová out.”

  Outside, through the door and up the steps to the rostrum, he heard disruptor fire and screaming. The assassins were still at work. No one had advanced on the bunker yet, and that had given Worf time to rifle through the lounge looking for a weapon.

  Grabbing an ornamental metal torchère, part of the decorations, Worf pulled it off its base and smashed the head against the wall, creating a formidable bludgeon with sharp, jagged ends.

  Kahless, who had stood mute until now, watched Worf, asking, “What do you intend?”

  Worf set down the makeshift weapon long enough to remove his combadge and hand it to Kahless. “I will stand at the door and delay them as long as possible,” Worf said. “Keep trying Enterprise. If I fall, you have the mek’leth.” He gestured to the ceremonial armament, still in the emperor’s other hand. Then he turned toward the doorway.

  Worf glanced back before he stepped out—only to see Kahless standing there, simply staring at the combadge.

  Kahless looked up, his eyes ablaze. “Worf, you must truly think me a fat nothing if you would protect me like a child. Or a bok-rat, burrowed in a hole!” He turned and threw the badge against the wall. It clattered to the floor.

  “That is not what I meant,” Worf said. He quickly reentered the room, heading to where the combadge landed. “I know your worth in battle. But you are the emperor—and whoever these people are, my life cannot mean as much as yours. If you live, we deny them victory.”

  “And if I do not fight those assassins, I was never Kahless. And you will have died protecting nothing.” Taking the mek’leth up, Kahless strode toward the door.

  There was no swaying him, Worf knew. He reclaimed the combadge and headed after the emperor.

  U.S.S. ENTERPRISE-E

  ORBITING GAMARAL

  Enterprise’s troubles kept multiplying—as did its number of attackers, both inside and out. With Gamaral in chaos, estab
lishing transporter service to and from the surface was of paramount importance, even if it meant dropping shields. But the boarders seemingly had no problem transporting through them, and the way they were striking transporter controls, La Forge wasn’t about to risk anyone’s life by energizing a signal that might become lost in transit.

  But Enterprise’s security teams could at least see the boarders. The situation outside was, if anything, more frustrating.

  “There’s another cloaked contact firing,” Ensign Abby Bali­demaj announced. Normally on the beta shift, she had reported to the bridge to help at the other tactical station while Konya worked to manage interfaces alight with blinking threats.

  “Target phasers on new contact and fire,” La Forge said.

  Balidemaj did. “No result.”

  “Keep on it.”

  Another blast buffeted Enterprise’s shields. The cloaked vessels outside were hornets, darting about and stinging—even if their shots appeared to be no more than harassing fire. With Balidemaj’s new contact, Lieutenant Dina Elfiki’s best guess was that there were at least eight attacking ships. That was based on the science officer’s quick mathematical modeling, utilizing all the readings on when and where the attackers had fired from.

  But there was, as yet, no way for La Forge to predict where they were before they fired. They don’t have a tell.

  In dealing with General Chang’s conspiracy years earlier, a different Enterprise had faced incoming fire from a single cloaked vessel. There were so many safety reasons to avoid firing weapons while cloaked that few ever did it. A subroutine disabling offensive systems while under cloak had been part of the standard Klingon bird-of-prey design for years. Whoever was firing clearly wasn’t worried about that—and nothing about their systems provided any kind of tip-off as to where they were. Chang had been undone by ionized exhaust from its impulse engines; La Forge hadn’t found anything like that yet. As with Shinzon’s Scimitar, neither tachyons nor antiprotons told where an attacker would be before it fired.

  Then again, La Forge thought, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps the key wasn’t to be found in where the shots were coming from—but rather, in what the shots were aimed at?

  Another barrage struck. “I think it’s nine contacts,” Elfiki said.

  La Forge didn’t hear her. He was onto some theorizing of his own. As yet, no deaths had been reported as a result of the barrages; the cloaked vessels’ strikes had seemed random, possibly not intent on providing anything more than a distraction for the boarders. But La Forge now suspected they were not random—and stepped quickly back behind the captain’s chair to a master systems display on the aft wall. It only took him a second to confirm his suspicions.

  “They’ve been targeting the subspace emitter pads on the hull,” he announced, heading back to the center seat. There were two dozen of the emitters, mounted on different sections of the ship, used for channeling transporter matter streams. “That’s why it’s seemed so random—they’ve been targeting a distributed system instead of a centralized one. It’s another part of their attack on our transporter systems.”

  “That’s what the boarders are after,” Konya said. He had scrambled security to every transporter room, but was still waiting to get word of one taken intact. “They just disable a room and leave.”

  “But they couldn’t expect to put them all out of commission,” La Forge said. “That’s what the external attack’s about.” The whole scheme, no doubt, was about keeping Enterprise from assisting those on Gamaral. There were as-yet-undamaged emitter pads that could only be approached from Enterprise’s aft; at least one of their attackers would be gunning for those eventually. The ship was a smaller target from behind and that meant La Forge had a relatively small arc to probe with fire.

  “Tactical, give me aft phasers and torpedoes. Randomized spread. We’re going fishing!”

  Thirteen

  As Valandris expected, resistance had stiffened as her ship’s site-to-site transporter delivered her and Tharas from one Enterprise transporter room to the next. They were one team of several, but they had made short work of their primary and secondary targets and were working on the tertiary now.

  As with the Orions, the Federation had been surprised by their transporter technology. Like everything else used on their mission, it had been a gift from the Fallen Lord, who in his wisdom had seen the power it would grant them. And he had also told them how and where to strike Enterprise, from inside and outside, so as to render the ship unable to aid those on Gamaral for a few minutes. That was all the time they needed.

  But the Fallen Lord had also demanded that the Federation casualties be kept to a minimum. That had made no sense to Valandris, but while her leader’s ways were often inscrutable, she had not found a reason to doubt him. Tharas had slipped earlier, incinerating an attacker in self-defense, but she had not killed so far.

  Not that the Starfleeters weren’t offering up temptations. Phaser fire blazed in anew from outside the doorway. There was little cover to be found in a Starfleet transporter room, and while Valandris’s armor had dispersed the energy from the shots she’d taken, it wouldn’t protect her from a barrage. Valandris fired her disruptor rifle at the deck and walls of the hallway repeatedly, clearing the aperture long enough for her to see one of her attackers peeking out from cover.

  It was that woman again. Valandris didn’t know enough to tell whether she was human or Vulcan, but she was definitely tenacious. She was the one who had shot at Valandris in the first transporter room she’d beamed into. Then, as now, Valandris had been tempted to put down the other guards quickly so that she might battle the resolute woman hand to hand.

  But the Fallen Lord would not approve, and this transporter room was finished. She slapped her wrist control and saw coruscating light surround her—

  —rematerializing, alongside Tharas, on a shuttlebay deck. One of the cargo transporters was here. It wasn’t clear the devices could be used to transport personnel, but Enterprise’s engineers were intrepid, and she didn’t put anything past them.

  Before she could start her mission of sabotage, she heard Hemtara shouting over her helmet comm.

  “We’re taking fire from Enterprise,” Hemtara said. “Cloak holding, but we can’t keep this up for long.”

  “We don’t have to. What of the surface teams?”

  “Still working. Some of the targets have fled to the woods. We will have them shortly, as soon—” Hemtara stopped speaking abruptly.

  “As soon as what? What is wrong?”

  “It is Kahless and Worf. They have left the bunker.”

  “Running?”

  “Attacking. One of our wounded has already transported up.”

  Valandris turned to face the cargo transporter—but in her mind’s eye, she was picturing the worsening situation on the planet below. It could be the ruination of everything the Fallen Lord wanted.

  Worf was there, evidently at Kahless’s side and fighting back. That tracked with everything she had ever heard about Worf, and she had heard quite a bit.

  Perhaps some of it was true.

  Turning away from the transporter, Valandris slung her rifle. “Wait,” she announced. “Hemtara, get us out of here.”

  “What?”

  Tharas looked back at her, startled as well.

  “You heard me. Put us down on the surface—now!”

  THE CIRCLE OF TRIUMPH

  GAMARAL

  Kiv’ota still breathed but was a dead weight, and a heavier one than Picard would have thought possible. All the celebrants at Gamaral seemed to have lived well. Picard only had the Klingon lord halfway down the steps when he saw light and movement down the stairwell. “Captain!”

  It was Šmrhová, a SIMs beacon attached to her phaser rifle and lighting the night. The security chief was bruised and breathless, her uniform ripped and soile
d as if she’d just run through a jungle at full tilt. “You can’t go that way, sir.”

  Picard’s eyes widened. “What?”

  Two more security officers, likewise panting, appeared behind Šmrhová. They turned just before they reached her and knelt, shooting into the darkness in the direction from which they’d come. Someone returned fire, with disruptor shots ripping through the night. Šmrhová slung her rifle and knelt to help Picard move Kiv’ota. With the powerful woman’s aid, Picard lugged his body to a spot halfway up the steps, clear from the firing.

  The security chief reached into her holster for her handheld phaser. She gave it to Picard and pointed back into the tunnel behind her. “Fifteen, maybe twenty attackers. They came in from the woods, ambushed us.” She anticipated Picard’s next question. “I guess they were already here before the transport inhibitors came online.”

  Your initial security sweep missed them, you mean. But the time for recriminations would be later. The captain looked back up the steps. “It’s carnage up there—we must do something. Are the inhibitors down now?”

  “Deactivated as soon as I got your code word. We’ve been hailing Enterprise—and we’ve been running.”

  Since sending Šmrhová the code word, Picard had been too busy with Kiv’ota to contact Enterprise. Still, his crew above was sure to know of events on Gamaral, so he was surprised not to have seen a response. He clapped his combadge. “Enterprise, this is Picard. What’s going on?”

  Glinn Dygan responded. “We’re repelling multiple boarders. Enterprise is under fire. Shields are up. Boarders are attacking the transporter systems.”

  Picard’s eyes locked in the darkness with Šmrhová’s. What the hell?