Myriad Universes 02_ Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido [143]
And while he did not lose faith now, he found it faltering ever so slightly. For he could not believe that the gods would allow something like this to happen.
He watched on his eyepiece as the Federation ship fired its weapons right into the gateway. The torpedoes detonated, and a huge burst of ignited verteron and silithium particles plumed outward from the gateway’s mouth. The Federation ship’s shields lit with the impact.
Omet’iklan barked at his fourth, who sat at the operations station: “Damage to the enemy vessel.”
“Reduced shield capacity, but no other damage.”
“What of the gateway?”
The fourth looked up in shock, an expression Omet’iklan had never seen on the soldier’s visage before. “I no longer read the gateway.”
This was disastrous. The Vorta had ordered Omet’iklan to protect Terok Nor, as the Founders feared an attack on it by a cloaked vessel. He had failed in that duty, but that was as nothing, compared to the failure he now felt.
Only one thing would ameliorate that failure. “Charge all weapons! Destroy that ship!”
“They are cloaking,” the fourth said.
“Engage antiproton scan. Find them!”
Born in a laboratory deep in the heart of the Dominion and bred to fight and obey, Omet’iklan rarely felt such intense rage as he felt now. While he was compelled to hunt down the Federation ship and destroy it, were he left to his own devices, he would do so anyway, with relish. Thanks to these Federation worms, access to the rest of the Dominion had been all but cut off. While cloning and ketracel-white-producing facilities were under construction within what used to be Cardassian space, they were not yet complete.
Which meant that it was not only urgent that Omet’iklan lead the fleet to victory, but also that he not die in the process. Once, Jem’Hadar were expendable, but no more. Now, victory truly was life.
“Enemy vessel detected.”
“Fire as soon as they are in range,” Omet’iklan said. “Destroy them!”
Shaking her head, Kadohata said, “They’re using an antiproton scan also, sir. Still on us.”
Picard’s memories of Locutus, Gul Madred, being stabbed in the heart as an ensign, the mind-meld with Sarek, sending Jack Crusher to his doom, ordering Terok Nor and the wormhole destroyed, and all the other awful memories of his life were pressing down on him, pushing against the confines of the box into which they were stuffed. A voice came from that box now: Do nothing, it said. Give in. Let the Jem’Hadar destroy you. You deserve it.
Picard shoved the voice back into the box. He might have committed heinous crimes, even by the standards of wartime, and if he survived this day, he would answer for them. But he would not doom the rest of his crew in a sad gesture of suicide.
“Decloak,” he said. “Lieutenant Addison, fire phasers on the lead ship, with a torpedo spread on the second one.”
And then the battle was joined.
Ro Laren sat at Picard’s side, marveling at the turns her life had taken. After watching her father being tortured to death, she had escaped from Bajor, swearing never to come back as long as Bajor was a defeated planet. She joined Starfleet, and had thought her career to be over after the disaster at Garon II. But then she got a second chance, serving under Captain Picard as his conn officer, then taking security training and coming back to Picard on his new Enterprise as security chief, and then first officer.
And after all that, she was about to die in the Bajoran system at the hands of the Cardassians’ new allies.
Bajor was still defeated. For every Kira Nerys who fought, there were hundreds who just let themselves be subjugated. And who could blame them, especially with these Jem’Hadar things helping the Cardassians?
Ro had no illusions about how this fight would go. There were three Jem’Hadar ships, and they were only one vessel. Yes, the