"You shouldn't be leading this," said Miho Inogashira, squeezing into a recess in the corridor while a pair of marines passed by, carrying a crate of grenades between them. Were those supplies being loaded or offloaded? They were high-explosive grenades, she saw. She would never issue such weapons to any of her security officers. Not when they would be fighting in close quarters, and aboard a Federation starship.
Alex had her head in a ceiling circuit trunk, tinkering with some piece of Orion technology that Inogashira couldn't pronounce. Her voice came back muffled. "I'm the only one who can fly the Wing."
"That's only because you haven't told anyone else how to read the controls."
"What are you suggesting? That I tell some Starfleet helmsmen how to work my boat? Uh-uh, that's not happening. I don't even trust Lance with her."
Lance Riker, the former freighter captain who had joined the crew at the same time as Susan and her carer, Miranda. Alex trusted his skills more than she did any of the Academy trained pilots aboard, but unfortunately Riker had been left behind on VX-41 to make room for the marines. Also, so that he could spend some quality time with Miranda – something they both deserved.
"Why not?" Miho insisted.
"Well, for one thing they'll mess up my seat. It took me months to get it right, you know. And if everyone knew how to fly the Wing it'd get sent on all sorts of stupid errands. No."
Inogashira didn't understand why Alex was so protective of her craft. She didn't trust Starfleet pilots to handle her right – she had said that before – but in Inogashira's opinion no amount of man handling could do the Shadow Wing any harm; the ship was already a mess. It could clip an asteroid and probably no one would notice.
She tried another approach. "You're wounded."
"Just a scratch."
"Alex, you got shot with a phase pistol. And you haven't let the doctor take a look at it yet."
The helmsman finished her work, and her smiling, satisfied head appeared from the trunk, smudged with dirt. She sealed up the panel and jumped down from the stepladder. While she set about cleaning herself up, Inogashira realised that she was intentionally avoiding her question.
"Your shoulder," she prompted. "The thing you've got a patch on."
Alex glanced at the bloody material. Kana had allowed the wound to weep a little, to make the dressing look more authentic, more necessary. "Yeah. Well, would you voluntarily go to the sickbay? Be honest."
"Good point," Miho allowed.
The two women laughed a little, but without much enthusiasm. The security chief was still concerned for her shipmate, and Alex was wishing that Inogashira hadn't reminded her about her injury – she had been trying to ignore it. Kana had very kindly repaired the damage, but she had forgotten to do anything about the pain and it was getting irritating.
Inogashira tried again. "Be sensible, Alex. You can show Hill how to operate your ship. He's a top pilot. He can get the team aboard the Daedalus."
"Sure. He wouldn't have a problem if he only has to fly in a straight line. Even the autopilot can handle that – just about. But if someone fires on the Wing and he has to take evasive action… He doesn't know her. Doesn't know how she handles, the distribution of her mass, rates of acceleration, manoeuvrability, etcetera. That sort of stuff takes years of familiarity to learn, he can't pick it up in an afternoon over tea and biscuits. Nah, Miho. I'm the only one who can fly this mission. End of discussion."
"All right, all right. You convince me. Just be very careful, okay? It would break Susan's heart if anything happened to you."
"Aw. Wouldn't that be a crying shame?"
Alex smiled. Whether it was Miho or Kana that she was smiling at, she wasn't a hundred percent sure. "I'll be careful. I'm always careful."
"No you're not. You're always reckless and rash."
"See, Miho, this is why it's a mistake to ship out with an old friend. They always think they know you better than you do, and they come up with all these little embarrassing stories."
"What kind of stories?" Perked up Inogashira.
Drake opened his mouth, but Alex cut him off quickly, "Nothing interesting. What are you doing down here, Will?"
"We're approaching the Vyar shipyard. Twenty minutes out. I hope you're ready to go?"
"I think the marines are about finished loading their stuff aboard. Major Tyler and his squad are already cluttering up my ship, so I'd say we're ready. You? Ready for this?"
Drake shrugged. "All things considered, I'd rather be back on SB2." There was more that he would have said, but not in the presence of Lieutenant Inogashira. Although the depth of his relationship with Alex Nain was well known, he was still disinclined to be totally open with her in front of other shipmates.
Aware of this, Alex said, "Miho, can you do a quick check for me? Make sure all the marine gear is stowed properly, and that Susan isn't hiding anywhere aboard this ship. Will, can you have a look at the targeting array for me? I haven't been able to get the guns to fire straight since you used them."
In the cockpit, Drake asked, "Are you sure no one else can do this?"
"There's a certain familiarity about this. Oh wait, Miho just asked me the exact same things. No, Will, no one else."
"I thought so. Alex, I'm not worried about you. God knows you're immortal. But if we're to go into battle, I'd like to have my best pilot at the helm."
Alex was apologetic. "Can't be in two places at once, Will. If I don't fly the Wing, we don't get the Daedalus back; it's as simple as that. Hill's not a bad pilot. Under no circumstances are you to repeat that – everyone knows I think Starfleet people can't fly."
Drake laughed. "Duly noted."
She finished tinkering with the navigation system, turned to her friend, and abruptly swept him up in a hug. Drake was as bemused as he was touched. Alex wasn't usually one for expressing herself physically. That she did now felt odd and somehow worrying. "Take care, hey, Will. Don't do anything heroic."
"Are you…worried, Alex?"
"Nah. Course not. I just need someone to give me a lift home, is all."
He grinned. "Of course. I'd better get back to the bridge. You take care, too, Alex. I want someone to give a lift home to."
"Sounds fair to me."
Drake returned to the bridge, taking Inogashira with him, which Alex was grateful for. They were both good friends, but she didn't want them around right now. All their questions, all their worry; she could brush it away just fine, smile and nod and say that, yeah, everything was cool, but deep down there was cold, hard fear. She was lying with every breath. She was used to lying – one couldn't live with a secret like hers and not lie constantly – but somehow this felt different. Concealing Kana, all the lies that entailed, she could do and never feel guilty about it in the slightest. Lying to her friends about this, she didn't feel guilty about either, but somehow weakened, worn out.
She didn't have much confidence in her plan, despite what she had said to everyone – Drake, Inogashira, Tyler and his marines, Kana. It wouldn't work, and if it did it had no right to. This was just as much a suicide mission as the ones those Japanese pilots had gone on centuries ago, climbing into their flimsy fighters and diving straight at U.S. ships.
Well, in twenty minutes she would be strapping into her fragile spaceship and diving it at a Federation starship, held in an enemy shipyard that was protected by fighters, corvettes – and possibly bigger ships by now – not to mention the few dozen cannons the station itself packed. Suicidal.
She felt…unsure. It was maddening. If she had been confident, unconfident, terrified, excited, aroused, whatever, she would have known how to handle it. This uncertainty was alien to her. So was the guilt. Guilt at the creeping certainty that she was about to get herself and everyone aboard the Shadow Wing killed.
These feelings were pent up inside of her. She could do with releasing them, but how? She couldn't talk to Will or Miho about it. She had her pride. Kana wouldn't listen, and if she did she sure as hell wouldn't understand. Her counterpart would probably just laugh and tell her she was a cry baby.
Maybe she was, at that.
She felt the Endeavour come out of warp. After so many years aboard starships, she could tell from the vibration of the deck plates whether a ship was moving at relativistic or FTL speed; she had no need to check instruments.
"Shadow Wing," called Tholiar over the comm, "we have reached the Vyar shipyard. They have increased their defences. Prepare for launch."
"Attention passengers, this is your pilot speaking. We will be departing in just a moment. Please ensure that you are strapped in, that your tray tables are in their upright and locked positions. Our destination today is the Starship Daedalus, and probably one hell of a firefight. ETA, bugger knows, but as fast as I can. I remind you that this is a no smoking flight. Thank you."
A new tremor passed through the ship, and Alex recognised that one as well: photonic torpedoes being discharged. That was her cue to launch, and she took it, no more time for doubting. Flicking a switch on her console, she signalled the shuttlebay flight controller that she was ready to go. The shuttlebay doors opened, the eternal night welcomed the stealth ship back into its element. Alex hoped that they had got away undetected, but there was no way of telling until someone fired on them – and by then it would probably be too late. She crossed her fingers, and brought the Shadow Wing about, to fly down the length of the Endeavour and then across the void to the shipyard – a barely visible grey smudge against the blackness of space.
The combined Federation-Klingon fleet had come out of warp in a single wide line, launching a volley of photonic torpedoes the instant that they exited subspace. The antimatter explosions would momentarily overload the enemy sensors, allowing the Shadow Wing to launch undetected. At least, that was the theory.
It seemed to be a good theory, as far as Alex could tell. Vyar ships of all shapes and sizes were buzzing around the fleet like angry wasps, but so far none of them had shown any interest in the Shadow Wing, or even acknowledged that it was there. She pointed her craft in the direction of the shipyard and gave a burst from the impulse thrusters. Tyler would probably object to her flying a straight-line course to the enemy outpost, but he wasn't around to object – she had locked the cockpit so that he couldn't come in and object – and she saw no reason to waste time with evasive manoeuvres when no one was even aware of them. Time was precious here. She had no idea how long the fleet would be able to stand up to the hammering the Vyar were dishing out.
Although, she pondered as she watched a quartet of Vyar corvettes explode silently, they might last just a bit longer than they had last time.
The tactical and science officers of all the Starfleet ships had spent every spare moment analysing the scans they had of the Vyar ships from their last encounter, comparing readings, devising strategies. Last time, the Vyar had been blank slates, and the Starfleet ships had been firing blind, hoping for lucky strikes. Now, the good guys knew almost as much about their enemies as the Vyar did about them.
While Brok and his cohorts aimed for specific targets, knocking out subsystems with precision phase cannon strikes, shattering the wounded Vyar craft with photonic torpedoes, the Klingons adopted a slightly different approach: they sprayed like crazy, a great rain of disruptor bolts and their own sickly green equivalent of torpedoes. It wasn't possible to carpet bomb space, but the Klingons were giving it a damned good try.
A Vyar frigate, a big grey sausage with a horseshoe-shaped engine stuck on the back, lost its hull plating, and a follow-up Klingon torpedo to its mid-section split the craft in two. Escape pods raced away before a third torpedo struck the drive section and reduced the craft to a thinly dispersed debris field.
Kana applauded. "I love starships exploding in the morning."
"That's the most horrible, tortured misquote I have ever heard. I knew it was a bad idea to let you see that movie."
"It was great! Pointless destruction of large swathes of forest, lots of fire, explosions, shooting, and people getting killed for no reason whatsoever. What wasn't to like?"
A fresh wing of fighters slid by the Shadow Wing, close enough that Alex could read the alien markings on the lead ship's fuselage. Although her ship and the fighters were both travelling very fast, space being so hideously large, it took almost a minute for them to close with and pass each other; a minute during which Alex very closely watched her instruments for any indication that the Vyar craft were going to change course, perhaps hitting her as a result. They didn't, and the flight of fighters passed silently 'above' the stealth ship. Alex allowed herself to breathe again.
"You weren't scared, were you?"
To Alex's intense annoyance, not only did her counterpart sound as though she hadn't been anxious in the least, she was nonchalantly playing with her yoyo. Fear? What's that? Kana seemed to be saying.
The human flicked on the rear screens to check the progress of the battle. Things were going better than she had expected. The Vyar fighters that had been such a danger before were being swatted from the sky for very little harm done to the good guys. One Klingon cruiser was on fire and one of the Phobos-class starships had a hull breach. Phobos-class starships were essentially spheres with a pair of warp nacelles tacked on the back. With the breach in its hull, this one looked a bit like a toffee apple that someone had taken a bite out of.
Up ahead, the shipyard was a giant mass of scaffolding, clutching the captured ships. They were on final approach now. Alex tapped the thrusters and nudged the stealth ship onto its new course. The craft floated towards the Daedalus. When they were close enough for a low-power scan, Alex performed it, and was relieved to find that the ship was intact and functional – the Vyar hadn't yet got to the point of taking it apart to see how it worked; they were probably still extracting information from the main computer.
"Captain Matsura, I need you up here."
Half a minute later, Alex heard someone tapping their knuckles against the cockpit door. She unlocked the door and Hiro Matsura came onto the cockpit; alone, fortunately; she had suspected that Tyler would take the opportunity to come and bug her.
The captain looked out the forward portholes at his starship and Alex saw him smile, relieved. She knew that Drake would react in exactly the same way if it had been the Endeavour they were recovering. Good captains cared about their ships.
"I've scanned her and she's intact. All systems functioning. We just have to get aboard."
"That's my job."
"Yup. The comm station is just here, Captain. Don't worry, I won't spy on you."
Matsura hoped he could trust her about that. This wasn't a simple computer password that he was about to input, it wasn't like if Alex stole it she would just be able to read his emails and look at his secret stash of pornography. The strings of numbers that he typed into the console now were the prefix codes for the Daedalus; not just the command to deactivate her shields, but to activate a security lockdown, open the shuttlebay, and to forbid all computer access unless proceeded by the appropriate command code.
"Shields are down," cried Alex victoriously. "The shuttlebay door is open. Ha ha! I bet they're making a mess of themselves over there. Okay, let's get in there. Hey, Tyler, hope your boys are ready."
"We're FMACO, Nain," he replied with mock seriousness – she could hear the smile in his voice, clear across the comm. "We're always ready."
As Alex piloted her craft into the hangar bay, she finally saw a problem that she should have anticipated long ago. The Shadow Wing was not a standard Starfleet craft, and the Daedalus-class hadn't been designed to carry it in its shuttlebay. The Endeavour had a special rack that the engineers had set up for it to land on, but there was no such thing aboard the Daedalus. There was nowhere to land, unless she wanted to put down on top of the starship's shuttles, crippling them and her craft. That wasn't option.
"I should have thought of this," Alex muttered, thinking fast. She could leave the Shadow Wing hovering using its antigravity thrusters, and tether it to the inside of the shuttlebay with a tractor beam to be doubly certain that it didn't go anywhere. That was simple enough. But how to get her passengers to where they needed to go? She couldn't get close enough to the deck for the marines to jump out without injuring themselves. While watching soldiers hobble around the ship might be comical, it wouldn't be good for their chances of recapturing the Daedalus.
"Can't you land?"
"No room."
"If we cleared the shuttles? You could push them into space with this craft's tractor beam."
"It would take too long."
This was ridiculous, she thought. To have come all this way, only to be stuck on the Shadow Wing because she couldn't find a place to land. She suddenly wished that she had left Matsura and the marines back on the Endeavour. If it had been her alone, Kana could have teleported aboard the starship. But if she did that now she would give her secret away, and that was far more important to her than the Daedalus.
Teleport…the transporter! The Shadow Wing had an Orion transporter device. Alex had very, very rarely used it, simply because she didn't trust the technology. Kana's teleportation magic trick she had faith in, but wires and technology and unpronounceable bits of machinery…nah. She wouldn't use it unless she absolutely had to.
Which she did now.
"Tyler, get your marines into the transporter room."
He was a good soldier; he knew how to follow orders. Unquestioningly, he rounded up his people and led them onto the transporter stage. From the cockpit, Alex accessed the transporter controls and beamed the marine squad off the ship. They materialised in a flash of green-grey light, directly beneath the Shadow Wing. She could have beamed them anywhere on the Daedalus, but there wouldn't have been any point. Matsura and his senior officers were needed to reactivate the starship, and they were still aboard the Shadow Wing.
The Starfleet officers were the next group to be beamed aboard the Daedalus. Alex set a timed command on the transporter, so that she could be beamed down with Matsura's party. She also took the precaution of setting an emergency signal, which any of them could use to beam back to the Shadow Wing at any time.
"We have to be fast," Matsura announced, firmly in command now that he was back on his own ship. "There's no telling how much longer the other ships can survive. McCallum, Williams and I will retake the bridge; Jezzelis, Wickersham, the armoury is yours, Atherton, take Nain and get to the engine room."
"Marines, you have your assigned objectives. Go."
With a pair of Marine privates, whose names she hadn't got around to learning, and Chief Engineer Atherton, she made her way up to the engineering deck. Their progress was rapid and unimpeded. The lack of any enemies to fight gave Alex plenty of time to reflect on how eerie it was around here. The Daedalus was identical to the Endeavour in every aspect of design; even the carpet was the same. It was spookily like home, except that this ship was deserted. They walked through empty corridors, passed abandoned rooms, and Alex felt like she was walking through a ghost town. The marines and Atherton provided no comfort – they were total strangers. Kana's presence was more reassuring.
As they approached the engine room, Alex got increasingly nervous. Not about her own situation, but about the battle that she was taking no part in. She suddenly felt so guilty about flying this mission, not staying aboard the Endeavour to help repel the Vyar. That was where she should have been.
She glanced anxiously at her counterpart. "Kana…do you know how the battle is going? How are our friends?"
The dark Nain closed her eyes, as though focusing deep inside herself, or on something far away. For a moment, her face was blank, but then she opened her luminous red eyes and smiled. "Our friends are fine, Alex."
She took Kana at her word, but her other side's reassurance didn't stop her from worrying. How much longer would Will and the others remain 'fine'? Time was still precious.
They reached the engine room without opposition. It was all too easy, in Alex's opinion. There were still Vyar aboard this ship; the Shadow Wing's sensors had confirmed that. Where were they? Maybe they had assumed that the systems chaos they were experiencing was the result of a mistake that they had made with their tinkering – that was the hope, anyway – but there still should have been Vyar technicians rushing up and down the ship, trying to put right what had gone wrong. They had seen no one.
"This doesn't feel right."
"No, it doesn't."
Atherton couldn't hear her worries, and the Marines were too professional to show fear. They took up positions either side of the engine room door, rifles in hand, ready to storm the room. The chief engineer pressed the door release control.
And a massive explosion tore apart the bulkhead, and flooded the corridor with fire.