David Mack - Star Trek: Typhon Pact #1: Zero Sum Game

Sarina stole a quick look at Bashirs wound and asked, Can you walk?

Not without help, he said. He started opening a pouch on his suit to retrieve his medkit. Itll take me ten minutes to fix it.

She thrust her hands into his armpits and lifted him to his feet. We dont have ten minutes right now. She reached inside the cab and pressed a button that opened the trains doors. We need to get off this train and into the citys transportation system. If its like most cities transit networks, it probably has old tunnels that are no longer in use.

He let Sarina help him out of the train and down to the tracks. Once they were on foot, it was easy to see that her prediction had been correct: there were many levels of tunnels and several lines running parallel to one another. A few had obviously fallen out of use and been allowed to sink into darkness and disrepair. Within a few minutes of abandoning the train, they had retreated deep into a long-forgotten corner of the Breen city.

Limping along with his arm draped over Sarinas shoulders for support, Bashir asked, What if they find traces of my DNA on the train?

They wont.

How can you be sure?

Somewhere above and behind them, a powerful explosion quaked the bedrock and rained dust on their heads.

Sarina smiled. Lets just say I took a few precautions.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Cover art and design by Alan Dingman

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-1-4391-6079-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-9164-4 (ebook)

For Marco and Margaret:

thanks for everything.

This story takes place in mid-2382, more than a year after the events depicted in the Star Trek Destiny trilogy and roughly three years after the events of the film Star Trek Nemesis.

In war there are no winners.

Neville Chamberlain, speech, 1938

Intruder alert! Lock down all decks! This is not a drill!

The warning repeated and echoed through the corridors of the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards command facility. Red lights flashed on bulkhead panels, and pressure doors started to roll closed, partitioning the space station.

Ensign Fyyl tried to block out the cacophony of deep, buzzing alarms as he sprinted toward his post, phaser in hand. Was it an attack? Fyyl had no idea what was happening. The skinny young Bolian was less than a year out of Starfleet Academy and until that moment had counted himself lucky to have been posted to the security detail on a platform orbiting Mars, one of the safest assignments in the Federation. Now it seemed as if he was in the thick of the actionthe last place hed ever wanted to be.

He stumbled to a halt in front of a companel. With trembling fingers he punched in his security code, confirmed his section was secure, and requested new orders. A multilevel schematic appeared on the display. In real time, sections of the station switched from yellow to green as deck officers and patrolling security personnel such as Fyyl checked in. Then a number of sections turned red, and the chief of security directed all his teams to converge on the intruder.

Here we go, Fyyl thought, sprinting from the companel to the nearest intersection. Courtesy of the stations active sensor network, the junctions airtight hatch slid open ahead of him and rolled shut behind him once hed passed into the next section. Through the windows lining each tube-shaped passage he saw other security personnel moving toward the core ring ahead.

Then he winced at the searing flash of phaser beams slicing through the air and steeled himself for the worst as he charged through the next doorway into the thick of a firefight. Pressing his back against a bulkhead, he snapped off a pair of quick shots in the same direction he saw other Starfleet personnel firing. Through the smoke and blinding ricochets, he couldnt see if he hit anything.

Fyyl ducked as a volley of electric-blue bolts blazed past him in the other direction. Two of his fellow Starfleeters collapsed to the deck, their eyes open but lifeless, their limbs splayed in the awkward poses of the dead. His heart pounding, Fyyl returned fire into the smoky darkness, trusting his training over his instincts, which told him to run and hide. Several meters ahead of Fyyl, visible even through the dense gray haze, a red warning light flashed.

Someone behind him shouted, Fall back!

Terrified and tripping over his own feet, Fyyl struggled to turn away from danger.

The corridor lit up like a sun, swallowing Fyyl and everything around him in a flash of light and heat beyond measure.

Theres been an explosion inside the station, declared Lieutenant Vixia, the half-Deltan operations officer of the U.S.S. Sparrow. Theyre venting air into space.

Commander Evan Granger leaned forward in his chair as he eyed the vapor jetting from a ragged wound in the hull of the command base. Take us to Red Alert. If they dont get that breach sealed in twenty seconds, get ready to close it with a force field from our shield generator.

Beyond the decades-old space station, nearly two dozen half-constructed starships lay moored in their spacedock frames, mere shells of the vessels they were meant to become. Spread out beneath them was the shallow, dusky curve of the Martian surface, its crater-scarred face dotted with the gleaming lights of cities.

Jex, any update from the station? Granger asked his tactical officer.

The short young Bajoran man replied, Not yet, sir. He tapped at his console. Im still picking up heavy comm chatter from inside the station. Sounds like the intruders still alive and on the move.

Prep a tractor beam. Be ready to snag any ship or escape pod that leaves that station without clearance.