He had caught her. Virox’s eyes glittered darkly. “Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Thuvetha and I have a—past.”
An overwhelming relief poured off her. “She’s telling the truth,” Troi said.
“Good.” Worf narrowed his eyes. “Now, I would like more of it.”
Virox sighed. “Thuvetha’s from an old Romulan family that had”—Troi sensed a burst of discomfort and guilt—“a high standing in Romulan society. I say had…”
“Go on,” Worf urged.
“They were involved in smuggling weapons,” Virox continued. “I intercepted one of their ships. Thuvetha’s father had been in charge of that ship, and while he escaped from me, he didn’t escape from the Tal Shiar.”
Virox took on a distant expression, her face soft. “Thuvetha was trying to frame me,” she said. “As revenge for what happened to her father, and to her family afterward. They fell out of favor. Left Romulus. I believe she grew up on an Orion colony.”
“That’s why you wanted to charge into the compound,” Troi said softly. “If you can get the treasures back yourself—”
“Then there could be no doubt of my innocence,” Virox finished. “You know how the Betazoid House leaders are. Even if I was officially cleared, the gossip would have been unbearable.”
Worf frowned. “Commander,” he said, “are you sensing deception from her?”
“She’s telling the truth,” Troi said.
“Of course I am,” Virox snapped. “Now that you know my reasoning, could we develop a plan?”
“I have every intention of retrieving those artifacts,” Worf said.
“Then why not attack?” Virox said. “The Enterprise should be able to attack Bryt’s holdings with minimal risk. Ferengi are not fighters by nature. When they see how easily we can overpower them, they’ll surrender.”
“Or flee,” Worf said. “Taking the treasures with them.”
“The Enterprise couldn’t catch them?” Virox arched an eyebrow.
Worf stated, “This must be taken care of quietly.”
“This would be quick!” Virox said. “There is no reason that a team of Starfleet officers could not successfully infiltrate a Ferengi gangster’s place, with minimal planning and minimal loss of life.”
“You mean Starfleet lives,” Worf said. “These Ferengi do not deserve to be killed, criminals or not.” Worf shifted in his seat. “Frankly, madam, I’m unclear why you are so keen on attacking. You were a spy, not a warrior—” He stopped himself. “Warriors,” he murmured.
“Worf?” Troi leaned forward.
“The Ferengi aren’t warriors either,” he said. “They’re businessmen. They’re negotiators.”
He looked at Troi. “There was something you shared with me once. You said your mother told it to you, when she first became ambassador.”
Troi nodded, remembering. “Yes,” she said. “About how Betazoids don’t find lying necessary.” She glanced over at Virox. “But she had learned to lie when she took up her position as an ambassador.”
“An ambassador is just a spy who works out of the shadows,” Virox said.
“Exactly,” Troi said. “And what my mother said—”
“When the situation calls for it,” Worf said, “sometimes the only way to negotiate is to lie.”
Troi felt a prickle on her neck: Virox was agreeing.
“I know how we’ll do this,” Worf said.
“Let’s hear it.” Virox seemed relieved.
“If a Ferengi gangster has the three treasures,” Worf said, “what do you think he’s going to do with them?”
Virox blinked. Then she laughed.
“He’s going to sell them,” she said.
“Exactly.” Troi smiled. “I doubt he cares who he sells them to, as long as the seller has the latinum he wants.”
“Are you suggesting we buy back the artifacts?” Virox asked.
Worf gave a sly grin. “Or at least pretend to.”
Virox’s approval was immediate.
“You want to scam a Ferengi,” Troi said dryly.
“We need to retrieve the treasures without the Ferengi knowing Starfleet is involved,” Worf said. “And Virox has the experience we need for this sort of operation.” He paused. “Obviously, Commander Troi and I will accompany you,” he said to Virox, “to assure your safety.”
“Yes,” Virox said. “I like that. Two Betazed criminals with a Klingon bodyguard.”
Worf frowned. “I suppose that will make as good a cover as any.”
“This is a good plan,” Virox said.
Troi took a deep breath. She looked over at Worf. It was a good plan, one that would avoid any unnecessary violence. Still, she could sense he was nervous. None of this was how he did things. She knew she wouldn’t want to carry out this ridiculous plan with anyone else.
When he caught her gaze, she gave him a smile.
Which he returned.
26
“I need to go to Bluster Beach,” Crusher said.
Riker stared at her.
“Beverly.” Will peeled himself off the wall he’d been leaning against. “You’re our only doctor. Why do you want to go down to the beach?”
Crusher walked over to the bed where Data was still stretched out, unmoving. The rest of the team was prepping outside: setting up a makeshift camp in the grasses, determining what technology wasn’t affected by the outage. Ensign Muñoz and Lieutenant Solanko were trekking out to a small spring in the nearby caves to secure potable water. Then they would scour the fields for the wild tubers Solanko said were safe to eat.
But Crusher couldn’t get the images of the beach out of her head. “Everything that’s happening here started on the beach. Or, most of it.” She looked at Data. “The science team was here for six months,” she said. “Everything they did confirmed all of the scans. No threat.”
“Until we got here.”
“Exactly,” Crusher said.
Sitting down in the chair she had pulled up alongside Data, Crusher was concerned that she didn’t know how long he had been under completely. With the power out, and all their devices malfunctioning, precise timekeeping was impossible. She knew it had not been twelve hours.
“Will,” Crusher said, “whatever is on the beach is trying to communicate. We need to listen.”
Riker blinked. “Are you certain?”
“No,” Crusher said. “That’s why I have to go to the beach. If there’s a chance that there is a life-form trying to speak with us—we can’t simply ignore it.”
“The station is in danger of collapsing. We don’t have time—”
“I understand that.” Crusher walked up closer to him. “Which is why I’ll be going alone. The rest of the team can continue their work on setting up camp outside. If I haven’t returned within two hours or so, send someone for me.”
Riker squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t like this, Beverly.” He looked over at her. “Tell me. What makes you think this is a life-form? That it’s trying to speak to us?”
“This infection, for lack of a better word, has affected both our crew and our technology. I saw it as an infection in the crew, because that was how their bodies reacted to it. But the dreams.” She nodded. “The dreams all suggested Bluster Beach too.”
Crusher glanced over at Riker.
“Dreams in most life-forms are a way for the mind to process the day’s events,” Crusher continued. “I thought the dreams were related to a possible infection. I think whatever this is, it was shaping the crew’s dreams. That’s how it’s trying to communicate.”
“And the equipment?” Riker said. “Data?”
“It’s the same thing,” she said. “I don’t—don’t know how, or what it even is, but I think it’s essentially reprogramming the station’s technology. The way it reprogrammed the crew’s dreams.” She strode over to the window and peered out, standing on her tiptoes. The pattern was still scorched into the grass, and beyond it, she could see tha
t the team had managed to get a shelter tent set up. “The biomass walls directed the phaser to create that,” she said. “But the whole station is controlled by the station computer. And what controls the station computer?”
She turned away from the window, back to Riker.
“We do,” she said. “We program the computer to do what we need it to do. Data was also programmed, by Noonian Soong. To think and act as a human does.”
Riker frowned.
“This life-form—it’s treating the crew and the technology the same,” Crusher said. “It’s planting the message it wants to send directly into the crew’s subconscious, and it’s altering the equipment programming somehow.” She paused. “That’s why Data is affected. It made the crew sick, it made Data sick.” She gestured up at the walls, the darkened lights. “It made the whole station sick.”
For a moment, Riker was silent. Crusher dropped her hands to her sides, feeling out of breath and desperate.
“All of these messages,” Riker said slowly, “are of the beach.”
“Exactly,” Crusher said. “It’s showing us the beach over and over again. That symbol out there”—she pointed at the window—“that’s the one piece that doesn’t fit the pattern. But I think if I can go to the beach, to the same place where the crew originally fell ill—”
Riker held up one hand. “Is there any chance what you learn might bring the station back online?”
“I don’t know. My hope is I can find the root cause,” Crusher said. “And once we have that, we might be able to fix the station.”
Riker nodded. “The generator has been off for about six hours at this point.”
“That gives us six more,” Crusher said. “The beach is a twenty-minute walk from here.” She smiled thinly. “Please, Will. It’s worth a shot.”
“How dangerous do you think this is going to be?”
That was the question Crusher had been dreading. Mostly because she didn’t have an answer.
“With the exception of Data, the infection didn’t cause harm to the team,” she finally said. “I believe that there’s an acceptable level of risk.”
Riker considered this. “Very well,” he said. “But you’re not going alone.”
“The team needs to work on our shelter…”
“And they will,” Riker said. “I’m coming along.”
“Will, that’s not necessary.”
“I don’t want you going out there alone,” Riker said. “And I can’t in good conscience send someone who’s already been infected. So it looks like it’s going to be the two of us or neither of us.”
* * *
Crusher and Riker waded through the tall grass. They each carried bags filled with containers of water that Malisson had managed to get from the replicator before it started pouring out sand. Their combadges had stopped squealing and appeared to be working normally, as did the tricorders, so they took both with them. However, the larger equipment was still malfunctioning. More mysteries.
Crusher gripped her medical tricorder. She pushed forward through the grass. The wind blustered across the team, damp and laced with the strange, sweet scent of this place. She peered up at the sky, a pale lavender at this time of day. The small, white sun was hidden behind layers of cotton-candy clouds. Kota would be a wonderful place to live if they could solve this one problem, she thought. The refugees deserved a beautiful home after what they had been through.
Crusher had seen so little of the planet since their arrival, but now, as she trudged through the silvery grasses, she realized how much it reminded her of Caldos, where she had grown up. The endless sweeping fields, battered by the wind. She could imagine colonists building stone manors out here, laying paths through the grass down to the beach. Would they keep the name, Bluster Beach? Or would the colonists give it a name of their own?
It was easy to daydream, thinking about Kota as a world filled with people and life, as she walked through the grass and the wind. But then her thoughts wandered further, and she saw the refugees dealing with Kota as it was now. Plagued by power failures. Replicators pouring sand out like it was a broken hourglass. Children opening padds to find waterfalls of languages. Crops tilled into strange symbols by their plows. Everyone on the planet dreaming simultaneously of the sea.
“We’re getting close!” Riker called out over his shoulder. Crusher took a deep breath. She couldn’t smell the salt yet, just the sweet scent of the grasses.
He stopped while she caught up with him. “I have a strange feeling,” he said in a low voice. “Like something’s watching us.”
Crusher turned her head, looking around. “What do you mean?” She lifted her tricorder. The grass rippled around them. Uninhabited. Hundreds of scans had confirmed it.
“Just—you know that prickly feeling you get, when someone’s watching you?” Riker rubbed the back of his neck. “It might be nerves. You don’t feel it?”
“I don’t—” Now that Riker had mentioned it to her, she felt the hairs on the back of her own neck, and the strange feeling of some being’s eyes on her. The power of suggestion, she told herself. She was on edge; she hadn’t slept much. Focus.
“I know what you mean,” she finally said.
Crusher flicked her gaze around the field. The grass seemed dense and endless, and suddenly she could imagine millions of glowing eyes watching them as they trekked to the beach.
They fell into step together, not speaking. The ground was tilting up a little, the grass thinning out. White sand kicked up onto the black of Crusher’s uniform.
Then she heard it. The ocean.
“I wish we could have used the transporter,” Riker said wryly.
Crusher gave a tight, nervous laugh.
And then, abruptly, she was there, at the crest. She stepped up beside Riker and saw the Kotan ocean for the first time, stretching out to the horizon. It was high tide, the water lapping at the base of the dunes.
The sky was turning a sickly bruised color. The horizon was nearly dark, and she thought she smelled the faint tang of metal.
A storm was rolling in.
Crusher stepped forward.
“Let’s go down,” she said. “And see what we can find.”
27
Deanna Troi adjusted her jacket one last time, ensuring that her combadge was well secured in a pocket. Worf had created their identities—black-market treasure hunters, with ready latinum.
“It’s been a while,” Virox said, smoothing her hair back into a severe bun. She smiled at her reflection and Troi felt a radiance of contentedness spilling out of her.
“You’re looking forward to this,” Troi said.
Virox smiled slyly. “You have no idea how dull my life has been. Dinner parties, high teas, and ceremony after ceremony, sitting in the garden waiting for something to happen.” She turned back to her reflection and gave it one last appraising glance.
“Is that why you used doubles?” Troi said. “So you could—” She couldn’t actually think of how Virox’s doubles would have alleviated her boredom.
Virox laughed. “Training them to hide their thoughts was one of the only ways I kept myself sane.”
It was still strange to hear Virox speak. Her audible laughter was at odds with the old grand madam image she had cultivated on Betazed.
Of course, Virox said. No one suspects an ultratraditional daughter of the Third House to have been a spy.
Virox whirled away from the mirror. She was wearing a shabby outfit, a bland brown skirt with work boots, and a canvas vest. “Your grandmother pulled me out of any number of sticky situations when I was younger.”
“What?”
Virox winked and strolled across the room. “Is Mister Worf ready?”
Troi shook her head. She dug into her pocket and tapped her combadge. “Troi to Worf,” she said. “We’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
“I hope you didn’t put him in anything too absurd,” Troi said as they stepped into the corridor.
Troi resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
They stepped into the transporter room. Troi let out an audible gasp.
She had seen him in Klingon dress before, but usually a Klingon uniform, with the imposing shoulder pads and the House sashes and the various decorations. Virox had dressed Worf in dark leather trousers and heavy black boots, a fur-lined cape tossed over one shoulder.
“You look—” Troi started.
“Ridiculous,” Worf grumbled. “No Klingon warrior would wear this.”
“I was going to say impressive.” She smiled up at him, feeling a rush of affection from him.
“You are not a warrior,” Virox said. “You are a criminal.”
Worf glowered at her. Still, he had been on undercover missions before, so he knew how important it was to blend in.
The commander also felt the barest hint of vanity. She suspected that Worf liked how he looked, and the fact that he liked it embarrassed him. Troi could feel that just beneath the surface.
It was unexpected and quite charming.
“Weapons?” Worf said as they stepped up onto the transporter pad.
Troi pulled out her type-1 phaser from a pocket. Worf gave it an approving nod. As fitting his role as their Klingon bodyguard, his mek’leth was strapped to his back, and a Klingon disruptor hung from his hip.
Worf had refused to arm Virox. “You have a bodyguard,” he pointed out. “I will protect you.” He smiled. “Energize.”
* * *
They were back on Issaw II, in the thick of the forest. “Ready?” Worf asked.
Troi nodded. Virox just smiled, looking—and feeling—excited.
“Very well.”
It was about a five-minute walk to the edge of the forest. Troi felt her heart flutter as they got closer, the Essar ruins towering over them.
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