“The Zhat Vash will determine what must be done with this intelligence,” said Helek, invoking that strange name once more. “And I will decide what course we will pursue in the interim.” A slow, cold smile emerged on Helek’s pale, bloodless lips. “Compile all the data you have recovered and secure it, Vadrel. You will speak of this to no one but me, on pain of death. Clear?”
He nodded. “Very well.”
“You have given me exactly what I require.” Helek’s eyes glittered with that murderous, fanatic light once more, and it frightened Vadrel more than anything else he could conceive of.
“Why do you hate these things so much?” He blurted it out before he could stop himself.
Helek turned a terrifying glare on him for a brief instant, and it was all he could do not to shrink into the bulkhead at his back. “Your error, Vadrel, is that you are always the thinker. The scientist and theoretician. You see everything as a puzzle to be solved. If you can resolve it, it is done. But you are so wrong.” She ran a finger over the bloody, inert face of the dead android. “And that is why you will never understand how great a danger we face. Or how far we must go to stop it.”
* * *
The boy’s dreams were made of fire and darkness, and he could not grasp them as anything more than storms of cruel pain and voids full of nothingness. He drifted in the shallows of unconsciousness, unable to sink deeper or rise to the surface.
Time was an unknown. All he had that was familiar was the fear. Sometimes, he felt like there was a force trying to bring him back, but he was too weak to respond to it. The injured boy was lost.
Then, slowly, the fire began to recede and the void ebbed away. Light and color and sensation returned. Thad felt softness enveloping him, and a careful warmth.
“Thaddeus?” He knew that voice. “Thaddeus, this is Friend. Can you hear me?”
He tried to reply, but it was hard to form the words. Instead, the boy concentrated all his energy on waking up back into the world.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Friend. “You are unwell, but I am going to correct that.”
For the first time in many hours, Thad opened his eyes. He saw a curved ceiling low above him, and his hands touched a spongy material at his back. He was lying inside a narrow tube lit with shimmering pink light, and behind the translucent material of the curved walls, he could see glowing forms moving back and forth.
“Where…?”
“This is a reparation chamber,” said Friend. “Like your sickbay on board the Titan, but more advanced. Do you understand, Thaddeus? We are going to heal you.”
“I hurt myself.” Recollection of the flash of light and the pain of his injuries raced through Thad’s small form and he tensed. “I want my mom. I want my dad.” He started to cry. He felt tiny and afraid.
“Your mother is close. Can you sense her?”
Thad took a breath and tried to reach out with his thoughts. He knew he had a little Betazoid in him—just a dash of magic, as his father liked to say—and what slight empathic ability he possessed allowed Thad to feel the vague shape of his mother on the edge of his thoughts.
She was there. He choked back a sob, wanting more than anything to hold her hand.
“I understand this may be disorienting for you,” Friend went on, the soothing voice coming from all around, “but you must be brave. Your parents have agreed to allow the Jazari to help you. Soon you will go back to sleep, and when you wake, you will be at optimal functionality once more.”
Thad tried very hard not to be scared, but he couldn’t do it. Back in the woods of the Ochre Dome, when that terrible blast of light and noise had struck him, some instinctive human sense told him he was broken inside. He was petrified that nothing would be able to put him right, and that he would never be able to go exploring again.
“You are safe,” said Friend, after he let all that out in a tearful moan. “I am here to talk to you, Thaddeus. Concentrate on the sound of my words.”
Myriad points of warmth lit up all around Thad’s neck and skull, and a comforting numbness crawled through him. “What is that…?”
“I have begun the reparation process.”
Thad remembered the lullabies his parents sang to him when he was smaller, and his tears came. “Mom sings to me when I can’t sleep.”
“I do not possess that skill set,” Friend admitted. “Perhaps I can occupy you in a different way. Would you like to play another light game?”
“Can… can you talk to me?”
“I am talking to you.”
“I mean, in your own language? In Jazari?”
Friend was silent for a moment, as the warmth moved slowly down the length of Thad’s body. He could see tiny glowing fronds growing out of the material around him, entering his skin and fixing all the bits of him that were damaged.
“We do not have a linguistic construct as you would understand it,” said Friend. “But I can render an audial representation of our communication pool.”
A new sound filled the capsule interior, a low rolling rush somewhere between the gentle tinkling of crystalline chimes and soft waves lapping at sand. Thad laughed, despite himself. “It sounds like music. It’s nice.”
“I am pleased you enjoy it. You are listening to the shared information transfer of thousands of Jazari individuals on board the great ship. They are talking to one another, and to me.”
“How can you do that… all at once?” Thad’s thoughts were becoming sluggish, and he felt sleep reaching out to him, but he wanted to stay awake. He needed to know more about Friend and the Jazari.
“I am in many places at once, Thaddeus. Here, talking to you. Elsewhere throughout our vessel and in several of the drone orbs.”
“You’re in the ship,” said the boy, with a thrill of sudden understanding. “No, you are the ship!”
“In a way.”
Thad felt himself becoming weepy again, despite Friend’s best efforts to keep him from sorrow. “I miss my ship. I want to be home.”
Friend’s reply was not what he expected. “We want that too.” He could hear true sadness in the voice. “We understand that need.”
“I… I have never had a home, not a real one,” admitted Thad. “We have… a nice cabin on the Titan. I have my own… my own room.” It was getting harder and harder to think straight. “But it’s not the same. Not like being on a planet.”
“Our home is a very great distance from here,” said Friend. “We seek to return to it. To find peace and security.”
“I’d like that.” Thad’s eyes drooped. “Mom and Dad and me. Like to live… on a planet one day…” The thought brought an image to him, of a planet like the forest in the Ochre Dome, but with no glassy ceiling and a horizon of distant mountains. A world like the one in the pictures of Earth his dad had shown him.
The dream image followed him into the stillness, and Thaddeus fell silent.
“Rest,” said Friend. “You will be well soon.”
* * *
“Thar she blows,” said Westerguard as the Titan’s proximity sensors sounded an alert.
“What is blowing?” At the neighboring console, the Denobulan helmswoman threw the dark-skinned navigator a curious look.
Lieutenant Westerguard made a gesture with his hand. “It’s a historical human idiom. It means, holy crap, look at that thing.” The navigator indicated the main viewer that dominated the forward quarter of the bridge.
On the screen, a huge swath of energetic cloud blotted out most of the starscape. Lit from within by exotic radiation and infernal fires, the plasma storm cell dominating Sector 743-D resembled a gigantic pool of molten metal, and the Titan was heading straight for it.
“Cancel that alarm.” Commander Vale rose from her seat and stepped into the midbridge. The captain had withdrawn to his ready room, leaving her the conn, and the mood on the command deck was still subdued.
Lieutenant Cantua silenced the trilling alert. “Fifteen minutes to outer boundary, sir,” she reported
, anticipating Vale’s next request.
Vale went to Livnah at the science station. “Do we have the course heading?”
Livnah gave a sharp sniff. “Confirmed. Transmission from the helm station of the Othrys. The Romulan transit path has been uploaded.”
“Better double-check their math,” said Keru, eyeing her from the security station. “Just to be certain. It only needs one vector to be a single decimal place out of line and we could sail right into a plasma plume.”
“Commander Medaka made his offer to guide the ships through this zone in good faith,” said Livnah. “He would not sabotage that.”
Vale couldn’t be sure if the tattooed science officer’s words were a question or a statement, and although she hadn’t voiced them, the first officer’s own concerns echoed those of the Trill at tactical.
Keru shrugged. “Maybe not. But there’s a lot of Romulans who are angry with Starfleet over our withdrawal from the rescue efforts. One of them might want to do something about it.”
Livnah gave Vale a quizzical look and she sighed. “Lieutenant Westerguard, tie in to science console one and take a pass over the Romulan navs before you input them. Just to be certain.”
“Aye, Commander.” The navigator followed her orders, and Vale’s gaze went back to the plasma storms.
On the screen, the Jazari ship was already making a turn toward a corridor of clear space between two great pillars of superheated gas. The winged form of the Othrys kept pace with the Titan, moving like an avian shadow. If everything went to plan, the passage through the storm zone would be over in a day or so, and past this sector would be clear space. Beyond that, the Jazari would leave the edges of the frontier and pass into unknown territory.
And that will be the last we ever see of them, she thought. Vale studied the Romulan warbird. Then it’ll be just the two of us out here. That’ll be an interesting journey back.
“Crossing outer boundary in ten minutes,” reported Cantua.
“Contact all decks and divisions,” said Vale, “caution all department heads to secure for transit. These storm zones are unpredictable. We’re likely to encounter some rough seas ahead.”
“Course passes muster,” said Westerguard. “Ready to proceed.”
Vale gave her assent, and the Titan shifted to follow the Jazari generation ship.
Across the bridge, the door to Captain Riker’s ready room stayed resolutely shut, and after a moment Vale made a snap decision. “Keru, mind the store for me.”
She marched across the room and tapped the lock. Riker didn’t order her in, but the door hissed open and she entered.
Inside, the ready room’s lighting was down and the window out into space was flat black, turned opaque.
The captain sat in a low chair, a silhouette leaning forward, staring out at nothing. “Problem, Chris?” Riker sounded gruff and distracted.
Of course he is distracted, thought Vale. His only child is over on that alien ship, facing life and death, while he’s up here watching the clock.
“We’ll be pushing into the plasma storm zone soon,” she reported. “Medaka’s people sent us the safe path through the sector and the course is laid in.”
Riker nodded once. “Good. Carry on.”
As Vale’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, she noted something else. There was a bottle of real, nonreplicated bourbon and a single empty glass sitting on the desk in front of him.
He sensed her hesitation. In the gloom, Will Riker seemed haunted, and Vale felt a sharp pang of sympathy for her commanding officer.
“Sir, if you want to go back across…” He shook his head, so Vale tried another tack. “There’s still a window of opportunity, Captain. I talked to McCreedy, she can have the La Rocca stripped down to bare bulkheads and boosted for high warp in thirty minutes.” The captain’s skiff was Titan’s fastest auxiliary craft, and with the chief engineer’s modifications, Vale knew it could be even swifter. “We can get your son to Starbase 88 in half the time—”
“He’s already gone under,” Riker broke in. “All I can do now is wait.”
Vale studied the bottle. It was in violation of every regulation in the book for a Starfleet officer to drink a nonsyntheholic liquor while on duty, but Christine knew what Riker had to be feeling and she found it hard to judge him. “Sir, I can take the rest of the watch from here.” She was offering to let him go below to his quarters and deal with this in private, but Riker refused.
“I haven’t opened it,” he said, indicating the bottle. “I thought I might, but I can’t.”
“I wouldn’t blame you.”
He turned away. “When I was a kid, my dad was fearless. At least, I always thought he was. But years later he told me that the only time he had really, truly known what fear felt like was on the day I got thrown from a horse and he thought I might die.” Riker reached for the neck of the bottle and turned it in place. “He’d never touched a drop of this stuff until then. And the truth is, an inch of bourbon doesn’t make the fear go away, not really. I hear him telling me that right now, that the worst of it was sitting in a medical center and not knowing if his son would ever wake up again.” Riker looked back at her, and Vale felt the echo of the pain her captain and friend was going through. “It’s worse than he told me, Chris.”
“We’re here for you and Deanna, Will,” she said. “Whatever you need.”
Riker got to his feet, gathering up the unopened bottle and the unused glass, placing them back in a cabinet. He pulled his uniform tunic straight and drew himself up. “I know,” he told her, “and for that, I will always be grateful.”
Then he moved past his first officer, becoming the captain once again, and strode back out onto the bridge.
ELEVEN
The door to the observation chamber slid silently open, and framed in the opening, Commander Medaka saw Major Helek’s thin, angular form. She was a hard-edged shadow, and he couldn’t help but think of her like a predator, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Out in the corridor, Centurion Garn stood guard, as impassive and menacing as ever. He was hard to read, Medaka thought, but efficient in his duties. However, a seed of doubt about the security officer’s ultimate loyalties lodged in the commander’s thoughts. I have not looked too closely at Garn’s past, he considered. I may regret that oversight. Medaka resolved to correct his error when the opportunity arose.
Helek did not wait for permission to enter, and she slipped inside. The door whispered closed and then the two of them were alone in the glass-walled compartment atop the warbird’s bridge. Orange light cast from the plasma storms filled the room with shifting waves of fire color, and when it caught the major’s pallid face, it gave her a strangely un-Romulan aspect. She carried a cloth bag in one hand, holding it close to her side.
“I do not care to have my time wasted,” he began. “Master Engineer Dasix has informed me that our vessel is back at optimal status, and I want to run drills to make sure all is well. This conversation prevents me from doing so, and I will not be pleased if I discover you have delayed vital ship’s duties for nothing.” Medaka fixed her with a measuring eye. “You asked to speak to me alone, and I have agreed to it, despite my better instincts. What is it you want, Major?”
“The Tal Shiar is not your enemy, Commander.”
Medaka scowled. “That is what you begin with? A half-truth, at the very best.”
“We all serve the Empire in our own ways,” she replied. “Is it impossible for you and I to be allies in this?”
“In my experience, the Tal Shiar only does what is best for the Tal Shiar. Your masters would burn the homeworld to a cinder if they thought it would make them stronger.”
“I am saddened to hear you say that.” Helek took on a demure aspect. “As I am sorrowful that Romulus will indeed burn, and neither you nor I nor the Tal Shiar can prevent it.” She came closer. “I know you dislike my methods. But we want the same thing.”
“Your methods?” Medaka pointed toward th
e closed door. “Cultivating spies aboard my vessel and suborning my officers? Scouring every word I utter for the smallest trace of sedition to hold over me? Absolutely I dislike them!”
“For the record, Commander, I have no doubt you are true to your oath to the praetor and the Empire. But sometimes that is not enough.”
“I will not apologize for how I conduct myself. And I refuse to let it limit me.”
Helek took that in, musing for a moment. “What would you do to keep our people safe, Commander? And not just those aboard this warbird, but all Romulans, everywhere?”
Medaka stiffened at the veiled challenge in her words. “I am here, now, when I should be standing together with my family in the face of the coming disaster! Does that not make my dedication clear?”
“It does.” She gave him a nod. “Commander, I asked for this private discussion to make you aware of a most grave discovery. And I assure you, it will not be a waste of your time and attention.” Helek produced a padd from inside her tunic. “It is my determination that the Othrys has stumbled upon a conspiracy of great proportions. The Federation captain, Riker, is manipulating you. He is in league with the Jazari, working with them against the Romulan Star Empire.”
Medaka folded his arms across his chest. “Riker’s wife and child are on the Jazari ship and his boy may die from injuries he suffered there. I doubt his father has the time to plot against us.”
“One could admire the strength of will it would take to use one’s firstborn as a tool of such deceit,” said Helek.
“Perhaps you might, Major,” Medaka retorted. “I find the suggestion abhorrent.”
“Then let me give you clarity,” she told him, tapping out a code on the padd. A holographic panel formed in the air between them, a glowing green frame enclosing a series of scanner images and captured footage. “The Jazari have been lying to us from the very start, Commander. Everything they have told us about their origins and their nature is a fabrication.”
“What are you talking about?”
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