The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  Garn went first, with Hosa a step behind. Helek took a last look over her shoulder. In the distance, through the trees, she could make out the white cubes of the temporary Federation encampment. Content that her team had not been observed, she followed her men deeper into the Jazari ship.

  * * *

  Thaddeus hugged himself to stop from trembling, pressing his back into the void in the bole of the tree, hoping that the menacing figures in black suits would not come for him.

  The boy’s intention had been to make his way back to the dome entrance Friend had shown to him, and once there, attempt to contact the glowing drone. Thad nursed the fantasy of getting Friend to come back to the camp with him, so he could not only shut up Shelsa once and for all, but also prove to his mother, Lieutenant Hernandez, Doctor Talov, and all the other adults that he hadn’t been making up stories.

  But then he saw the figures in black and all his brittle bravery fractured. Thad couldn’t put it into words, but just like he felt Shelsa’s anger, he could feel that these people were not here with good intentions. The way they moved, keeping to the shadows, it set off all kinds of red alerts in the boy’s mind.

  He got himself as deep into cover as he could and watched them find the hidden hatch and force it open.

  These people are not Starfleet, Thad told himself. Starfleet don’t sneak around! And that left only one other option.

  “Romulans.” He whispered the word. Thad had never met a Romulan but he knew they looked a lot like Vulcans. Hanee Phosia had once told him that Romulans were what you would get if you made a Vulcan very, very angry, and Thad had no desire to see that up close.

  But he also saw the weapons in their hands as he unconsciously read their intentions. They had come here to do harm to someone, he was certain of it.

  Were they here to find Friend and hurt her? Or Zade and the other Jazari?

  The horrible possibilities swirled through the boy’s thoughts and made him feel ill. Thad pulled his communicator disc from his pocket and fingered it, but the device was still inoperative. In his haste to leave camp he hadn’t thought to find a replacement.

  What would Dad do? Thad squeezed his eyes shut and thought hard. Back on the Titan, there was a drill for things like this. If you ever see anything weird on the ship, that seems like it doesn’t belong there, his father had told him, go tap a panel and ask the computer to help you find someone who can help.

  But the nearest person who could help was back in the camp, and even if Thad ran home as fast as he could, the Romulans would be gone before anything could be done.

  And he could imagine Shelsa sneering at him when he told the adults. They would think he was telling tales. No one would believe him.

  Thad is a liar-liar-liar! Shelsa’s words echoed through his mind, and once more his cheeks burned crimson.

  The figures in black vanished one by one through the open hatch, and after a moment Thad rose out of cover. Perhaps he couldn’t get back to the camp quick enough, but he could get to the hatch, and on the other side… He could find Friend or Zade and warn them.

  If he did that, then everyone would understand. Mom and Dad would understand, and maybe the Jazari would be so grateful that they’d teach him some of their language after all.

  Thad broke into a headlong run, dashing toward the open hatch.

  After all, he thought, gathering his courage, I can’t get any more grounded than I already am.

  * * *

  The interior of the Jazari generation ship was disappointingly unremarkable, Helek decided.

  Illumination in the squared-off corridors came in a low purple-blue shade that did little to differentiate one passageway from another, and she noted how the design of the walls and floor repeated itself. A sure sign that modular technology had been employed to build the huge vessel, she thought, but it lacked an aesthetic quality. Romulan starships had a martial elegance to their construction, but the only visual signature Helek could see on this craft was a recurring motif of oblique angles in the form of support frames and doorways.

  Still, the lighting and the structure cast plentiful shadows, and those they could make use of. Keeping close to the walls, Garn led the team down a long access way with Hosa a step behind. Helek studied the sensor scan projected onto her visor, watching for a viable target.

  There! Motion detectors embedded in the surface of the stealth suit’s black skin registered a mass moving up ahead, where the corridor branched, and Helek glanced at Garn. He nodded back at her, the centurion reading the same contact.

  For a brief moment, the detectors showed something else, something behind them, and Helek hesitated. She turned in place, staring back into the gloom. The sensor return faded away and she listened carefully.

  “Major?” Hosa leaned closer. “Is there a problem?”

  Helek saw nothing, and she frowned. She was allowing her mind to play tricks on her. “Negative,” she muttered. “Remain on mission.”

  “Target closing,” whispered Garn, adjusting his grip on his baton.

  The others fell silent, and Helek heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Presently, a Jazari male in a yellow coverall appeared around the corner, walking with an oddly rigid gait and a blank expression on his quasi-reptilian face.

  Helek studied the alien as he came closer. The Jazari didn’t seem to notice them, his thoughts elsewhere. He would soon regret his inattention to his surroundings.

  “Now,” she breathed.

  Garn and Hosa burst out of the shadows, in front of and behind the lone Jazari, moving so fast that the alien was caught completely by surprise.

  “What is—?” He started to speak, but whatever questions the Jazari had were cut short by the brutal application of the stun batons to his torso.

  Flashes of bright blue lightning crackled around the alien’s body and he let out a peculiar, atonal cry. Twitching and shaking, the Jazari didn’t collapse all at once, so Garn hit him again with a second, heavier charge in the belly.

  This time, all consciousness fled from the alien and he toppled like a felled tree, crashing hard to the deck.

  Helek darted glances around, making sure there were no signs their attack had been detected, while Hosa knelt by the unconscious alien and secured a sensor-masking unit around his arm. It was imperative their quarry could not be tracked.

  Garn peered at the tip of his baton before holstering it. “How long will this keep one of them out of it?”

  “Unknown,” said Helek. “So we must move quickly. Take the prisoner.”

  Garn bent and hauled the Jazari up over his shoulder with a grunt. “Heavier than he appears.”

  “We have what we came for,” said the major. “Fall back to the transit site.”

  * * *

  It took every ounce of the boy’s bravery to trail after the Romulans, and Thad found his hands trembling and his stomach knotting. But still he dared to follow, keeping his distance and pressing himself into the same shadows the invaders were using to conceal their activity.

  He’d hoped to find something like a public data terminal, with which he could contact Friend or one of the Jazari, but there was no evidence of anything like that along the length of the sparse, wide corridor, nor any sign of the floating drones. Aboard a Starfleet ship, there was a computer panel every hundred meters—but here, only bare walls and blank, sealed doorways. Thad reluctantly moved deeper into the ship, following the curve of the corridor and hoping against hope to find what he needed.

  He was terrified that the Romulans would spot him, so he made himself as small and as silent as possible. Once or twice, the tallest of the three figures stopped and looked in his direction, as if it could sense him there. Thad held his breath and held statue still, each time wondering if his luck would run out.

  And then, to the boy’s openmouthed shock, he saw them ambush the lone Jazari and knock him out. He couldn’t understand the reason for this act of cruelty. It would have been easy to let the Jazari pass them by where they
were hidden, but instead they deliberately attacked.

  Thad saw the biggest of the trio gather up the limp body of the fallen Jazari as if he were a sack of supplies. They’re abducting him, he realized, they’re going to take him back to their ship!

  For an instant, Thad hated that he was just a boy, too small and too weak to do anything to stop this act of aggression. Indignation burned in him. They have no right to do this! But he could not stop them, and Thad’s fear came back tenfold when he realized that the Romulans would take him too if he was discovered.

  They started in his direction, and Thad took off like a rocket, sprinting as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn’t dare to look back, dashing through the shadows, back toward the spill of artificial daylight coming through the gap in the open hatch.

  He fairly threw himself over the threshold and back into the Ochre Dome, tripping over his own feet, scrambling back up again and running into the undergrowth. Thad made it to his hiding place from before, in the bole of the big tree, and he flattened himself on the ground, wishing the earth would open up and swallow him. His breath came in quick, panting gasps, and he covered his mouth with both hands. If they hear me, they’ll kidnap me.

  A moment later, the tall and thin figure stepped through the open hatch, quickly followed by the other two black-clad Romulans. As one of them closed the diagonal doors and restored the illusion of the fake stone wall, the big one carried the lifeless Jazari back toward the large boulder in the middle of the clearing.

  They were so close that Thad could have hit them with a thrown stone.

  Suddenly, without warning, their unconscious prisoner stirred and tried to break free of the big figure’s grip. He writhed and struggled, casting desperately around—and he locked eyes with Thad, crouching there among the thick grasses.

  The Jazari’s expression implored the boy for help, but there was nothing that he could do. The big Romulan pulled out his baton and threw his captive onto the dirt before shocking him again. Thad had to turn away, the violence sickening him.

  When he dared to glance up again, the other black-suited Romulans were standing around the fallen Jazari. One of them removed a cylinder of some sort from a backpack, while the tall one—who seemed to be in charge—used a slim probe to draw a blood sample from the prisoner. The probe went into the cylinder and the second Romulan placed it at the foot of the boulder, before stepping back.

  A dull, humming buzz filled the air, and the green shimmer of a transporter whisked the Romulans and their prisoner away.

  Gingerly, Thad got to his feet. He was alone in the clearing, but the cylinder still remained.

  “Friend!” Thad yelled the name at the top of his lungs “Can you hear me? Friend, please, I need you to come here right now! Something very bad is going on!”

  He had no idea if the disembodied voice heard him, so the boy approached the boulder, craning his neck to see the device the Romulans had left behind.

  When Thad was half a meter away, he heard a low rhythmic pulse emanating from the cylinder. He could see it more clearly now, a thing like an hourglass inside a metal shell, within it swirling chains of glowing energy and the vial of fluid taken from the kidnapped Jazari. With each passing second, the speed of the pulse increased and the glow grew brighter.

  The boy felt a sense of imminent threat as the glow inside the device took on a menacing crimson aura. Everything in him screamed to run away and Thad surrendered to the impulse, taking big, loping steps over the uneven ground to put as much distance as he could between himself and the Romulan device.

  Then a flash of light behind him turned the world blood red for one dizzying second, and a vicious wall of heat slammed into the boy, picking him up off his feet and tossing him into the air.

  Grassy ground and domed sky wheeled around him as Thad was flung away by the shock of the device’s detonation.

  He clipped a thick tree trunk and fell in a heap amid its roots, lost to darkness.

  NINE

  Vadrel stepped back from securing the restraints around the male Jazari’s wrists and ankles, then threw Helek a wary glance. “How long do we have until they are aware this one is missing?”

  Helek folded her arms. “As far as the others of his kind know, he is dead. Vaporized in the blast from an overloaded power node.”

  The scientist scowled, looking around the dimly lit space of his laboratory. At the only door, the security guard Hosa stood as an impassive sentinel, his face a blank.

  “You laid a false trail,” said Vadrel. “The Tal Shiar do have their clever ways.” He paused. “How was it done? Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess. A genetic sample from the prisoner in an undetectable explosive matrix, yes? So anyone who scans the blast site will pick up just enough trace organic matter to believe there was a victim.”

  “Your intuition does you credit,” she allowed.

  “Not really.” Vadrel seemed irritated with himself. “I’ve seen it done. They used the same method to falsify my death when I had to leave my old life behind. It’s very effective, if one does not dig too deeply.”

  “Fortunate that the Tal Shiar had use for you,” she replied. “If not… there would have been no fiction about your ending.”

  Vadrel studied the unconscious Jazari. “So you’ll terminate this one when you are done with him, is that the intention? It’s not as if we can return him.”

  “Are you becoming squeamish in your later years?” She approached the angled chair on which the comatose alien was lying. “Disappointing.”

  “Death without purpose is always disappointing,” he countered.

  “Oh, this one will serve a purpose, Vadrel. Of that you may be certain.”

  Without warning, the Jazari’s eyes snapped open and he was instantly awake. He jerked against the restraints, shock written across his broad, scaled features. “What is going on?” He looked wildly around the room, finding Helek and fixing on her. “Why did you attack me? I am no threat to you! What is this place? Where am I?”

  “Remain calm,” said Vadrel. “You are… safe.”

  “I do not believe I am,” retorted the Jazari. “I am Redei, a technician of the Sixteenth Sept, and you have no right to hold me captive! Release me immediately.”

  Helek came closer, letting her voice drop. “Redei, I regret that these methods were necessary, but I am afraid I must compel you to provide certain answers to me. And I do not believe you or your people would do so willingly. So I am obliged to use coercive methods.”

  “If you intend to threaten my life and use me as a bargaining chip, I warn you that the Governing Sept will not negotiate—”

  The major smiled coldly. “No, no. You misunderstand. We didn’t take you to ransom you back to your people.” She picked up a photic probe from a tray of tools nearby and switched it on. “We took you because we’re going to interrogate you.”

  Helek picked a fleshy spot on Redei’s throat where his scales were thinnest and touched the probe to his skin. A web of energy leaped from the tool’s tip and into his body. The Jazari went into spasm, his mouth locked open wide in a silent scream.

  Vadrel made a disgusted noise and backed away a step. He worked a medical tricorder, aiming it in the alien’s direction.

  Helek moved the probe away and let Redei recover from the surge of pain. “I think you understand the situation now. No more questions. Only answers.”

  The shudders running through the Jazari faded and he recovered quickly. She made a mental note of that. The reptilians had a stronger constitution than expected.

  Redei took panting breaths and his head rolled as he tried to take in the whole room. Helek knew this kind of behavior pattern. She had seen it in other interrogations, with other species. He was searching for an escape route, or for someone who would give him respite from the source of the pain. But there was only the grim-faced scientist, the silent security guard, and her. Helek waited for him to grasp the reality of the situation.

  “There is only on
e way out of this,” she told him, “and that is to tell me what I want to know.”

  “The ways of the Jazari are our own,” Redei replied. “We do not speak of them to outsiders. For your sake as well as ours.”

  Helek wondered what that last comment meant, but now wasn’t the time to pursue it. She knew that Commander Medaka would soon be back aboard the Othrys, and the last thing she wanted was for that fool to find his way down here to the lab and interfere.

  “I don’t care about your ways,” she told Redei. “I have only one simple query for you to answer. Do so honestly and I will free you.” Helek made a show of dialing up the power on the photic probe. “Tell me where your people are hiding the synthetics.”

  Redei flinched as if she had struck him. “Hiding…?”

  “We detected the presence of positronic systems on board your great ship. Synthetic minds, Redei. Artificial intelligences, androids and the like. The Jazari’s attempts to cloak their existence are commendable, but ultimately futile. You have them concealed somewhere in among all those decks and domes. You are going to tell me where.”

  “I…” The Jazari shifted in place, lost in the middle distance. “I see.” He paused for a moment, then spoke again. “You are acting on a misconception. There are no artificial life-forms on board our vessel. Your detection was in error.”

  “Was it?” Helek looked to Vadrel, and the scientist shook his head.

  “No. The additional readings gathered remotely when you were over there with Garn and Hosa confirm it.”

  “I know nothing about these synthetics you speak of,” insisted Redei. “Release me! Your abduction of my person is an act of gross criminality, and it will not be permitted! Let me off this ship!”

  “Did the Jazari build the synthetics themselves?” Helek circled the captive. “Are they your serviles, or does your society have an equality with them? Is that why you are so determined to maintain your privacy?”