STAR TREK - SCE - 13-16 (Omnibus 4) - No Surrender

Contents

No Surrender

by Jeff Mariotte

Caveat Emptor

by Ian Edginton & Mike Collins

Past Life

by Robert Greenberger

Oaths

by Glenn Hauman

About the Authors

Look for STAR TREK fiction from Pocket Books

“Greetings to you, Friends. I am Prophet

Milia. Are you of the Way?”

Suddenly, everything clicked in Sonya Gomez’s head. The odd sense of familiarity that had been nagging

in the back of her head finally came into focus as soon as the serene Ferengi asked about “the Way.”

“Yes,” she said quickly, “we are.”

“My Adjusters were concerned about your inquiries. Such questioning is not of the Way. Being part of

the Way of Milia is to be of the whole of Milia.”He nodded to them, putting his hand to his chest.“Joy to

you, friends. Peace and contentment will fill you.”

He faded as quickly as he’d appeared, the moment of confrontation having apparently passed. Gomez,

however, felt her apprehension growing.

“We,” she said, “are in big trouble.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents 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.

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Schuster, Inc.

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Paramount Pictures.

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Contents

No Surrender

by Jeff Mariotte

Caveat Emptor

by Ian Edginton & Mike Collins

Past Life

by Robert Greenberger

Oaths

by Glenn Hauman

About the Authors

No Surrender

Jeff Mariotte

Chapter

1

Deborah Bradford clutched Ben’s small hand tightly as they boarded the shuttle on Kursican Primus.

The boy had just turned three—big enough to walk on his own, but small enough that she was concerned

about him getting trampled underfoot. She was especially concerned about some of the less humanoid

races also boarding the ship—that Benzite, for example, whose bearing made him appear aloof, even

haughty, might not have deigned to look down to notice someone whose head barely reached past his

knees. Once they had taken their seats, though, she relaxed, as much as she could. The flight to the

Plat—the Kursican Orbital Incarceration Platform—would take nine hours, the shuttle having been built

more for load capacity than speed.

The Kursicans had apparently put little thought or effort into the passenger compartment of the shuttle. It

held about one hundred and twenty seats, Deborah estimated, in four rows of three seats each, separated

by narrow aisles. The bulkheads were undecorated metal, and there were no ports to show the view

outside or anything else to distract the eye. Passengers willing to pay a premium could ride in a private

cabin, but there were fewer than a dozen available, and Deborah hadn’t wanted to spend that much

anyway. She just hoped Ben would be able to sleep in his seat. She wanted him rested and in a cheerful

mood when he met his grandfather.

Over the course of the nine-hour trip, he met more of their fellow passengers than she did—not

surprising, since he was a rambunctious toddler, and she was, as the mother of a three-year-old, near

exhaustion most of the time. Ben, though, managed to make the acquaintance of Uree, a Deltan diplomat

on his way to the Plat on Federation business; the Benzite, who turned out to have a soft spot for

children; and three of the guards who kept wary eyes on the group. In the aisle seat of their row sat a

medical technician named Isitov, a human from Val’Jon, which shared this planetary system with

Kursican and Szylith. Isitov seemed glad of the distraction Ben offered; Deborah had the impression that

he was nervous about this posting. But then he was very young, and she was sure that even a more

experienced sort might be a bit on edge about taking a job on a space station that held one thousand

criminals—well, criminals and political prisoners,she corrected herself mentally—with a staff of only

about one hundred.

She was most impressed that Ben had managed to converse with Uree. The Deltan was part of a

mission to consider the three sister planets for membership in the Federation. As a show of good faith,

the Federation wanted prisoners from Federation-member planets to be released from the Plat and sent

to Federation-approved facilities, or perhaps freed, if an examination of the facts proved them not guilty

of the crimes for which they’d been imprisoned. Kursican had a reputation of being somewhat

overzealous when it came to law enforcement, and the Plat had an even worse reputation as harsh and

terrible punishment under any circumstances.

Deborah knew that seeing her father there would break her heart. But not seeing him would have been

worse yet. Besides, she owed it to Augustus Bradford to introduce him to his first grandson, Benjamin.

After the shuttle docked in the Plat’s shuttlebay, Deborah gathered her things and Ben’s and prepared to

disembark. Isitov stepped aside to let them pass, and managed to back into another passenger, dropping

his own bag in the process. He scooped it up quickly with muttered apologies to the passenger behind

him and to Deborah. She noticed a sheen of sweat glossing his upper lip as she stepped past him and

toward the exit.Poor guy really is nervous, she thought. She held Ben’s hand and led him off the shuttle,

still thinking about Isitov because it was easier than thinking about her father, incarcerated for life because

of his political beliefs. She hoped the trip wouldn’t prove overly traumatic for any of them.

Chapter

2

Captain David Gold sat down behind his desk and ran a hand through his hair, thinking,This is why it’s

so white. He had nothing but respect for his crew, and he loved his ship. But theda Vinci bounced all

over space like a pinball, it seemed. Anyplace there was a problem, he got the call.Didn’t every ship

have an engineer or two on board? he wondered.Does S.C.E. have to handle every little thing?

He knew that being indispensable was preferable to the alternative. But no sooner had they picked up

Soloman, Carol Abramowitz, and Bart Faulwell from their sojourn on Keorga than Captain Montgomery

Scott was sending them out on yet another emergency call. Gold had stepped off the bridge and into his

ready room, because Scotty had specifically asked to speak with Gold in private. And, though he didn’t

yet know why, Gold knew that the only reason for that would be because there was something singularly

unpleasant about this assignment.

“Screen on,” he said when he felt ready to hear the news.

His viewscreen blinked on. In a moment, Scotty’s face was before him. But the usually garrulous S.C.E.

liaison wasn’t wearing his typical smile.“Good,” he said,“you’re sittin’ down.”

“Yes,” Gold replied. “Why does that matter?”

“‘Cause I’m sendin’ you on a mission, even though theda Vinciis the last ship in the fleet I’d send if I had

any choice,” Scott said.

“Where?”

“The Kursican system. More specifically, the Kursican Orbital Incarceration Platform.”

Gold narrowed his eyes. “That’s a prison station, no?”

“That’s correct,”Scotty confirmed.“They’re havin’ a wee problem.”

“Why would you not want to send us? Not that I’m looking for a reason to go, but we’re relatively close

right now—and I stress ‘relatively,’ considering they’re practically in the Delta Quadrant.”

“That’s why Iamsendin’ you—time is definitely of the essence, and you’re the closest S.C.E. crew I’ve

got. As for why I would rather not—there’s a personal reason.”

Gold didn’t like the sound of that. But he knew the decision had been made. He paused long enough to

tell Ensign Wong over the intercom to have theda Vinci change course for Kursican, warp nine. Then he

turned back to Scotty’s image on the viewscreen. “What’s the nature of the ‘wee problem’?” he asked.

“The prison—they call it the Plat—has gone completely haywire,”Scotty explained.“It’s slipped its

moorings. There’s been no communicatin’ with it, so they don’t know what’s happened. Its stabilizers

are shot. It’s spinnin’ and bouncin’ like a tennis ball in a tornado, the way I hear it, and its orbit is

degrading rapidly. Somethin’ isn’t done soon, it’s likely to enter Kursican atmosphere and slam into

something. And there are a lot of folks on that planet—it’d be hard to drop a platform that big and not

land on someone’s head.”

“And the Kursicans are doing what?” Gold asked. “They can’t bring it under control remotely?”

“They’ve tried. Between you and me, I don’t think they’ve tried that hard. They seem not to care much

about what happens to the folks onboard the platform—far as they’re concerned, it’s the dregs of

Kursican and her sister planets. But when the thing comes down on them, they might sing a different

tune.”

“Still,” Gold said. “It seems like they ought to make some effort on their own behalf. They’re not even a

Federation planet, for that matter. We’re involved why, exactly?”

“You’re right, they’re not. But they’re under consideration, and we happen to have an

ambassador—name’s Uree, a Deltan—who’s out there now. In fact, he’s on the Plat. That’s our

justification. We’ve asked the Kursicans if they mind us steppin’ in, and they’ve given their blessing. If

nothing else, we’ve got to see if we can get him off alive.”

“Good,” Gold said. “I’m starting to see the picture. One thing, though. Why not theda Vinci? What’s this

personal reason you spoke of?”

“Because, David,”Scotty said, his voice somber,“one of the prisoners on the Plat is a gentleman named

Augustus Bradford. I believe you know him.”

Know him?Gold thought.Now there’san under-statement. He hadn’t heard the name in years, but he’d

never forget it….

David Gold and Gus Bradford had entered Starfleet Academy the same year. They had become close

friends. After the Academy, they’d both served on theGettysburg, under Captain Mark Jameson. Gus in

particular had idolized Jameson, and Gold had to admit that, back then, the captain had seemed like the

real thing. He was courageous, he was smart, he was not afraid of making hard decisions, and more often

than not, he made the right ones. He was already justifiably famous in Starfleet for his negotiating skills,

with his success on Mordan IV being the feather in his cap. When Gus heard they were being assigned to

Jameson’s ship, he had literally danced for joy.

But Jameson hadn’t been quite the negotiator he had claimed to be. Decades later, the truth about what

happened on Mordan IV had come out. Both Gold and Bradford had moved on by then; when the story

spread, Gold had contacted Bradford and they’d spoken about it, and about the disgrace that had come

to Jameson late in life.

Jameson had been dispatched to Mordan IV because Karnas, the son of an assassinated tribal leader

there, had captured a starship and threatened to kill its passengers and crew unless Starfleet gave him the

weapons he felt he needed to avenge his father’s death. Jameson got the ship back intact, saving the lives

of sixty-three people, and he was hailed as a hero for his efforts. But what Starfleet didn’t know—until

years had passed and millions had died—was that Jameson had given in to Karnas’s demands. He had

given Karnas the weapons he wanted. Knowing he’d violated the Prime Directive by doing so, Jameson

tried to fix things by giving the planet’s other tribes the same weapons he’d given Karnas, thereby

maintaining the balance of power.

What he had really accomplished, though, was to give Mordan IV the means with which to destroy

itself. A civil war began, which lasted for forty years and came close to wiping out everyone on the

planet. Decades later, now a retired admiral, Jameson was brought back to Mordan IV on board the

U.S.S. Enterprise. Having taken a restorative drug to counter the effects of the Iverson’s disease that

wracked his body, Jameson learned that Karnas had lured him back to the planet to punish him for his

long-ago actions. He managed to negotiate a release for captive Federation representatives by turning

himself over to Karnas. But it was already too late for Jameson—the drug he had taken killed him, and,

at his wife’s request, he was buried on Mordan IV.

Gus had been different after that. Gold had always stayed in touch with him—he had been Bradford’s

best man when he married Anita, and Bradford had stepped into a synagogue for his first time when Gold

had wed the lovely Rabbi Rachel Gilman. Gold had become godfather to the Bradfords’ daughter

Deborah, and the two families had often socialized and even traveled together. But learning of Jameson’s

betrayal of his principles, and his forty-year concealment of his crimes, had turned Gus sour somehow. It

was as if, having idolized the man so much, he couldn’t deal with the truth about him. That conversation

twelve years ago, on hearing the news of Jameson’s death, had been the last time they’d spoken. All of

Gold’s later attempts to contact him had been rebuffed. Gus had left Starfleet, even left Anita. The last

Gold had heard, through the grape-vine, he’d moved out of Federation space altogether.

Which meant it was perfectly plausible that he’d ended up in the Kursican system, Gold realized. He

also realized that Scotty was looking at him questioningly. “Sorry,” he said. “A little reminiscence.”

“I understand, David. I’m sorry to have to spring this on you.”

“No, it’s not a problem,” Gold said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Do you happen to know what he’s in for?”

“There’s a political movement, mostly centered around humans who settled on the planet Val’Jon,

opposed to Kursican or the other planets in the system joining the Federation. Apparently they went

beyond polite disagreement to violent action. Kursican authorities rounded up the ringleaders, and

Bradford was one of them.”

“Well, that sounds right,” Gold said. “He went there to get away from the Federation, after all.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Don’t worry about me, Scotty,” Gold assured him. “I liked Gus Bradford once. But that was long ago,

and there’s a lot of water under that particular bridge.”

“All right, then,”Scotty said.“There’s one more thing you ought to know, though.”

“What’s this, the other shoe?”

“More or less. Someone else is on the station—just went there to visit her father, according to Kursican

authorities—arriving on the same shuttle as the Federation ambassador.”

“Not Deborah,” Gold said, remembering the brown-haired little girl who used to climb on his knee and

beg for stories.

“Aye. Deborah. And her son Benjamin,”Scotty confirmed.

“Gus Bradford is a grandfather?”

“These things happen,”Scotty said.“You ought to know that better than most.”

Gold glanced at an array of images phasing in and out of visibility on his desk in random order. Family

photos. Scotty was right, of course—Ruth, one of his many granddaughters, was about to provide him

with the latest in an even larger number of great-grandchildren. The only thing surprising about Bradford

having a grandchild was that Gold hadn’t heard about it. “I suppose they do. No matter, Scotty. We’re

on our way. We’ll keep the thing in space where it belongs, and we’ll rescue anyone on board that we

can. Whether or not their name is Bradford.”

“I know you will, David. I just wanted you to be warned before you got into it.”

“I appreciate it, Scotty,” Gold said.

Scott signed off then. Gold immediately went to the bridge. Just now, he didn’t want to be alone with his

thoughts.

Chapter

3

Commander Sonya Gomez and Lieutenant Commander Kieran Duffy studied the schematics of the

Orbital Incarceration Platform that the Kursicans had—somewhat reluctantly, it seemed to

Kieran—supplied them. They sat close together in the ship’s briefing room, knees touching. Every now

and then one of them would take the other’s hand to point out something, and would hold that hand just a

little longer than was absolutely necessary.

“It used to be a jumping-off station, early on,” Sonya was saying. “They had the hardest time launching

anything big enough for serious exploration from the planetary surface. So all their early launches were

from the platform.”

“Guess they didn’t have the right inspiration,” Kieran replied.

“What do you mean? Like what?”

He smiled at her, wishing there was time to lose himself in those deep brown eyes. “If they’d known you

were waiting out there, I’m sure they’d have figured things out a lot sooner.”

She laughed, a little uneasily, Kieran thought, and shook her head, then finger-combed strands of thick

black hair away from her eyes. “Yeah, me and Helen of Troy,” she said. “The face that launched a

thousand starships.”

“Exactly.”

“Flatterer.”

“I only say what I mean.”

“Sure you do,” she said. “Come on, there’s a lot to cover here. What’ve you found out?”

Kieran breathed a long sigh.Back to work, he thought.Sonnie sure has a way of getting down to

business when she wants to. “Like you say, it’s old,” he said. “Fairly primitive. The prisoners are kept

here, in the middle.” He pointed to a conical section—wide at the top, narrowing at the

bottom—wrapped around a center core. “They’re in stacked cells through here, the cells ringing the

central passageways. Guards move through the core passageways, and they can see into or access any

cell from there.”

“How many prisoners does it hold?” Sonya asked him.

“A thousand,” Kieran answered. “The worst of the worst, the Kursicans say. The ones they don’t ever

want to see again, I guess.” He indicated a ring below the bottom of the cone. “Down here is where the

guards’ barracks are, between the cells and the support offices and operations facilities.” His hand

traveled down further. “This ring and corridor array is where ops is, all the prison authority offices,

life-support systems, infirmary, mess, all that. Down here”—he pointed to the bottommost section of the

station—“is a very closely regulated transporter room—”

“I would hope so,” Sonya interjected. “Closely regulated, I mean.”

“Right. Also, the power supply is down here. And the shuttlebay and escape pods are all here, too.”

“So anyone who wants to get on or off has to go through there,” she said.

“That’s right. And the prisoners, I gather, go higher up the cone the nastier they are. Your everyday

murderers are kept down low, near the bottom. Your mass murderers go higher up, with the lawyers and

politicians.”

Sonya laughed. He liked the sound of that, and the way her white teeth gleamed, pearlescent in the soft

light from the display screen.

“Basically,” he said, “we’re looking at a small, floating city.”

“Although not one you’d want to live in if you had a choice,” Sonya commented.

“True. Especially now, since if you lived there you’d probably be having your head slammed against the

walls of your cell every thirty seconds or so.”

“Here’s the tricky part, as I see it,” Sonya said. “The station may be old, but the one thing they’ve kept

up to date are the defensive systems.”

“Makes sense. No point in having a prison station if just anyone can land on it and take away the

prisoners.”

“Right,” she continued. “So when we get there, we can’t simply beam ourselves onboard. We can’t get

too close without setting off phaser arrays, photon torpedoes, a whole range of defensive weapons. Even

if we could bypass those, can you imagine trying to land in a shuttlebay that’s spinning and whirling

around in space with no set pattern?”

“I guess maybe we’ll find out,” Kieran said. He took her hands in his own. “You know, sitting here with

you—even doing something as mundane as looking over the plans of a Kursican prison…there’s just

something about it that makes me want to—”

“Not here, not now.” Captain David Gold stood in the doorway of the briefing room. “The Kursicans

were very hesitant to even hand over those plans. I’d rather see you focused on them instead of each

other.”

Sonya stood quickly; Kieran could see her cheeks flush. “We were, Captain,” she said. “I mean, we had

just finished going over them again. I think we know as much as we’re going to until we see the real

thing.”

“Good,” Gold said. “Because we’ll be there within the hour. Gomez, I’d like you to call your team

together and let them know what they’re up against. I wish I could go with you, but that’s only for

personal reasons. My place is here, on theda Vinci. You’ll be heading up the away team, Gomez. Take

whoever you need, but get on that station and restore its controls.”

“We’ll definitely need Elizabeth,” Sonya said. Elizabeth Lense was the ship’s chief medical officer.

“Emmett and the other medical crew will be on standby here on the ship,” Gold said. “Once the systems

are back on-line over there, those with the worst injuries can be beamed here to sickbay. There are likely

to be a lot of injuries on that station. Most likely a good number of fatalities, too, I’m afraid. It’s been

flailing around out there for hours and hours at this point.”

“Very well, sir,” Sonya said. “I’ll call a meeting and brief them right away.”

“I think that would be an excellent idea,” Gold said. “And you might think about sitting on opposite sides

of the table when the meeting takes place.”

Kieran shuddered as Gold left the observation lounge.

“What?” Sonya asked.

“Sorry, just had flashbacks to my father yelling at me when I was a teenager.”

Gold had mixed feelings about the relationship between Gomez and Duffy. On the one hand, he firmly

approved of being in love, if love it was. He certainly loved Rachel with all his heart. But on the other

hand, he didn’t serve aboard starship with Rachel. He missed her while he was away and she was home

in New York. But he didn’t have to worry, every time he went into action, where she was or if she would

be harmed. He was afraid that if these two got too involved, there was always the chance that they’d be

watching out for each other to the detriment of themselves, or the rest of the crew.

They were both professionals, he knew. They’d proven themselves over and over again, under every

type of circumstance. There was nothing they couldn’t handle. In fact, when Security Chief Corsi had

raised her own objections to the romance, Gold had defended their right to pursue the relationship, as

long as it didn’t interfere with their duties.

That was the problem, of course—shipboard romances could cause all sorts oftsuris. The same

concerns went, he supposed, for close shipboard friendships, even when there was no romantic element

involved. He and Gus Bradford had been that way for a while. They’d watched each other’s backs,

tended each other’s wounds. Along the way they’d come to know each other as well, Gold thought, as

two people could.

He found that part of him was looking forward to seeing Gus. In spite of the man’s terse dismissal of him

twelve years ago, and his refusal to talk to Gold since, he found Gus an enjoyable man to spend time

with, and figured that probably hadn’t changed. He was an articulate and creative man, a kind of

philosopher. He was always thinking, always seeking, investigating new spiritual or intellectual paths.

STAR TREK - SCE - 13-16 (Omnibus 4) - No Surrender

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