The Jackal's Trick

by John Jackson Miller

  “Some of these goods were from Fortar’s storehouse,” he said as the two stood before a busy merchant’s table. He picked up a yellowish brick and showed Riker a tiny symbol imprinted on it. “That’s his syndicate’s stamp. It’s an auditing aid for the warehouse—it shows Fortar’s already taken his piece of the action.”

  Riker turned the brick over in his hand. Enterprise had identified Fortar as the victim in the Unsung strike in the Azure Nebula. “Could the dealer have gotten this long ago?”

  “No, sir, no!” The Bolian who ran the stall stepped over. “These goods are fresh. Just traded to me last week.” He ran his hands lovingly over the bricks. “Pure gorbakka root extract, ground and ready to season your stew. If it was more than a month old, it would be coming apart in your hands. Fresh, I say.”

  “How did you get it?”

  The Bolian studied the officers’ uniforms. “I . . . do not recall.”

  Riker rolled his eyes. Dennisar sighed and looked at the merchant. “Would you rather be bribed or threatened?”

  “That depends. Bribed or threatened how?”

  “I’ve got some gold-pressed latinum just for the occasion. Or we can discuss how the previous owner of these goods wound up dead a short while ago.”

  “I see. And what gives you jurisdiction?”

  Riker stepped in closer and said, “I have a Luna-class starship overhead with a crew of three hundred fifty. I’m pretty sure a very curious Starfleet vessel and crew can be bad for business.”

  “Hmmm.” The Bolian put his finger to his lips. “Bribe.”

  While Dennisar fished for the payment, the merchant rounded the table and spoke covertly to them. “A group of traders came in a few days ago. Nobody knows who they were—but they had all manner of goods from Fortar’s stores. And they weren’t Orions.”

  Riker nodded. “They were Klingons.”

  “Oh, no. There was a Ferengi, a couple of humans, a Cardassian—all different sorts. They didn’t look like pirates at all. They looked more like—I don’t know, technical types.”

  Riker and Dennisar looked at each other. “No Klingons?”

  The Bolian thought. “There was a Klingon couple who came in later—they met the Ferengi and left. An old man and a young woman.”

  “An old man?”

  “I never heard a name, but I could never forget that face. He wore a cowl—but he was so scarred. He’d clearly been burned long ago. But Klingons are a hardy lot.”

  Riker’s eyes widened. The Bolian had just described the aged character claiming to be Kruge whom Worf had met on Thane. He’d worked with a female Klingon too. Could the Ferengi and the others have been his accomplices?

  Dennisar passed the Bolian his payment. The merchant quickly pocketed it. “Are you looking to find who killed Fortar?” he asked.

  Riker nodded.

  “I met him once when he visited here, years ago. He had a little daughter then—I can only imagine the life that girl had. I hope she was spared.” With that, the Bolian stepped back behind his wares and returned to work.

  Riker took Dennisar aside. “You’ve got more of that latinum?”

  The Orion nodded. “We keep it for moments just like this, sir.”

  “You’re going shopping. I want your squad to buy every single thing in this pavilion with a stamp from Fortar’s warehouse.”

  Dennisar looked around. “That could be a lot.”

  “It’s all been handled. But we know for a fact that whoever was working with the Unsung handled it. We’ll analyze the goods for DNA to see if we can find anyone we have a record of.”

  Dennisar looked around and chewed his lip. “Yes, sir. We’ll, ah, encourage the merchants to give us biometric samples so we can rule them out.”

  “I’ll have Commander Troi beam down. Maybe she can help you broker cooperation. The locals are on edge about us as it is.”

  The chief told Riker, “The attacks on Leotis and Fortar—they’ve never seemed right to me, sir.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We know the Unsung attacked Leotis to get the itinerary for the Gamaral event. But you’d have to know something about Leotis’s operation to know he had it—much less knowing how to find Dinskaar.” Dennisar’s brow furrowed. “How in the hell did a bunch of Klingon exiles from the Briar Patch stumble across Fortar’s hideaway? Neither we nor the Klingons have ever been able to find it.”

  “And they did it while on the run.” Riker scratched his beard. “You’ve got something there, Chief. Carry on.”

  PHANTOM WING VESSEL RODAK

  LANKAL EXPANSE, KLINGON EMPIRE

  Worf fell, and the fall seemed to last forever.

  As he tumbled, the emptiness below resolved at last into the brownness of muck and mire. He landed face first in the foul-smelling filth.

  Blinded by the mud, he struggled to get to his hands and knees. Reaching out, his fingers found something metal and taut. A chain. He pulled against it to help himself upright and wiped at his eyes.

  “Kahless . . . I am sorry I have failed you.”

  “Why do you say this?”

  Startled, Worf looked to see the source of the words. The chain he held bound Kahless, in harness and yoke just as he had been in the sewage pit on Thane. “Kahless,” Worf said, “I have come for you.” But seeing Kahless bound again in this place took the life out of him, and above all there was no light. Worf sagged against the restraint. “I have come for you—but I have failed. I cannot help you to Sto-Vo-Kor.”

  Kahless looked on him and laughed. “That, Worf, is because I am supposed to come for you . . .”

  Worf opened his eyes to blinding light. “Kahless? Is that you?”

  “Kahless?” A laugh, male and guttural.

  Worf vaguely saw two blurry figures. One, large, held the light. The other he knew. “Sarken,” he said, seeing the girl before him.

  She pointed. “I told you he was here, Zokar.”

  Worf blinked, his feverish mind only beginning to understand. The Klingon with the light was bald and one-armed, and older than Worf; he vaguely remembered seeing him across the exiles’ camp in Thane. “A stowaway,” Zokar said. “Has he been aboard since we left the compound?”

  “No, I saw him beam in. It was when we were in that big battle.”

  “Hmm.” The adult passed the light to the girl and knelt. Frisking Worf, he pulled off his combadge. Then Zokar noticed the mek’leth sitting nearby. “I like this,” he said, taking it. “A long time since I have seen a good Klingon blade.”

  Worf looked up at the girl. “Sarken, I asked you not to tell.”

  Sarken’s face twisted with hurt. “You killed my father. This is what I am supposed to do.”

  “Supposed to do?” Rising after his completed search of Worf’s body, Zokar donned the mek’leth and its holder and looked back at her, amused. “Has he been talking to you, girl?”

  “He said family was important. If he’s right, then I had to say something.” She watched Zokar’s face. “Right?”

  Zokar looked puzzled for a moment—and then he laughed again. “A few words with you, Worf, and she’s picking up Klingon morality!” Then he leaned close to the little girl and rasped into her ear, “He’s not telling you the bad parts.”

  “What bad parts?”

  “The parts that make it okay for him to kill your father and feel proud of it,” Zokar said. “Or the part where Klingons can turn their backs on you for something you didn’t do.” His answer seemed to confuse her.

  Worf tried to get up, but his muscles gave out. Zokar looked back down at him. “He is sick?”

  “He got cut when he beamed in,” she said. “But he’s had aches and a fever and wants water all the time.”

  Zokar took the light back from her and examined Worf’s leg. Then he knelt over and shined it in the commander’s face. “Worf, my friend, you have tharkak’ra.”

  Worf looked at him blankly.

  “A virus from Thane. Children are carriers
. Adults get it once and get over it. I have seen it a dozen times.”

  “But . . . Kahless and I were several days on Thane . . .”

  “Not around children. We carry many in close quarters. The ventilation systems are likely crawling with it.”

  Zokar started to rise. Feeling a sudden burst of energy, Worf reached out and clutched at the warrior’s collar. Zokar shoved him away, as one brushing off dust. “What were you to do, Worf, fight us all singlehandedly? Like you attempted during the muster on Thane?”

  “He brought some things,” Sarken said. “He was going to use them to call his friends.”

  “Ah.” Zokar loomed over Worf. “You can forget about that. Cause me the least trouble, and I will kill you. And I would have words with you first.”

  Worf shook his head in delirium. “Words? With me?”

  Zokar rose and looked at Sarken. “Watch him. I will go to the transporter room and beam him to medical bay overflow two. No one will see him in there—and it will do for a prison while I need him.” He stared down at Worf. “The son of Mogh and I will tell stories of great battles.”

  Forty-five

  RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DEPOT

  STARBASE 24

  In the illusion projection control center aboard Houdini, La Forge and Tuvok watched—and listened—as Aggadak tromped back through the room. Since they’d boarded an hour earlier, she had been on a tear trying to get the systems activated. In that time, she had ranted about her job, Starfleet food, the station’s bedding, and, most of all, about the lack of respect she was getting from her superiors.

  As she vanished into another corridor again, La Forge stepped over to Tuvok and smirked. “Definitely detecting a low pH level here.”

  Tuvok caught the allusion. “Her attitude is indeed caustic.”

  “Doctor,” as it turned out, was a term of respect attached to the Nausicaan by the staff. Aggadak was fascinated by the technologies of non-Federation starships; the fact that no one at the facility shared her unbridled enthusiasm for Houdini and its mysteries had not stopped her from lavishing interest on it.

  Reentering the room, Aggadak forced her immense form beneath a control station. La Forge could hear electrical sparking. “Why Starfleet, Doctor?” he asked.

  Her voice came from below. “Have you met other Nausicaans, Commander?”

  “I have.”

  “Then that answers that.” Aggadak slid out from beneath the console and pointed to her forehead. “The males in our society only use their heads when they need something dense enough to punch a hole in a wall.”

  La Forge grinned. “And the females?”

  “Have to live with the males, and have the moods to prove it. Most do not share my pleasant manner.” She stood and tapped a control on the interface—and when nothing happened, she beat it repeatedly with both fists. Houdini responded, with the room lighting up. Screens flickered as computer systems came alive.

  “You were saying,” La Forge said, “that I had how Houdini works all wrong?”

  “That’s right. At Ventax II, you concluded that Ardra’s illusions were a combination of force-field projection, holography, and transporter effects.”

  “Yes, they were monitoring Captain Picard via his combadge, and she was using an eye implant to control her activities.” La Forge gestured around. “Houdini’s computers were managing the whole thing. It appeared that the middle topside nacelle was for transmitting the holo-projections.”

  “That’s what the engineering team that looked at it before it was impounded figured. That was only partly right.” Aggadak walked to a bulkhead and slammed her fist against it. “Damn, it’s reset itself again.” She looked to Tuvok. “Can you whistle?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Can either of you whistle? I don’t have the lips for it.”

  La Forge blew air.

  “Not like that,” Aggadak said. “The ‘Snake Charmer Song.’ ”

  “The what?”

  “Come on. You’re human. You must know it. ‘There’s a place in France, where the ladies do a dance . . .’ ”

  La Forge looked at her blankly. “I must’ve missed class that day.”

  “I have it here,” the Vulcan responded, looking at his padd. “An Earth song, ‘The Streets of Cairo, or the Poor Little Country Maid.’ Introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where it accompanied a dancer known as ‘Little Egypt.’ ” Tuvok pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. “There are apparently many ribald alternate lyrics.”

  “Never mind that,” Aggadak said. “The tune, the tune.”

  Tuvok touched a control on the device, and a bamboo flute played a warbling tune.

  Aggadak waved her hands. “No, no. What’s wrong with you? Whistle.”

  Tuvok looked at La Forge. “We fail to see why we—”

  “Whistle!”

  La Forge began whistling, and Tuvok joined in as best he could. With the last note, a blue light appeared along a seam in the bulkhead—and what had appeared to be a curve in the surface opened. Beyond was a conical chamber ringed with strobing lights. It could have been a small transporter room—except that none of the equipment inside looked familiar to Tuvok. A sonorous hum filled the room.

  “That tune cycles the door,” Aggadak said. “You can’t believe how I searched for it—once I knew that room was there.” She stepped inside and began throwing switches. “Harry Houdini—the Terran illusionist this vessel is named for—was a young performer at the Chicago expo. He played what they called an Indian fakir.”

  “It was a ‘midway show,’ ” Tuvok read from his tricorder. “Apparently some kind of festival area.”

  “And ‘Little Egypt’ danced beneath the Ferris wheel at the far end—to that tune.” The Nausicaan looked inside the chamber with pride. “Commander La Forge and the other investigators thought this part of the ship was an auxiliary warp core. I realized it was something else—and then it was a matter of finding the pass key in the ship’s records.”

  La Forge looked around in wonder. “How long did that take?”

  “Eight years. I was bored.”

  Tuvok studied the interfaces in the illusion projection control room. The screens by each terminal were awash with information. “Are the projection systems operative?”

  “Hah!” Aggadak pushed past Tuvok and toggled a control. “Watch this.”

  At Aggadak’s command, the lights in the chamber glowed brighter. Tuvok looked around, expecting something. Instead, he saw La Forge staring at him, his mouth open.

  “Commander—you look like the devil.”

  Tuvok put his hands before him. They were a deep red. His clothing, too, appeared different to him: a crimson cloak. Aggadak knocked over two chairs trying to fetch him a mirror.

  “Fascinating,” Tuvok said, and the voice was not his, but rather that of some infernal being. Seeing his reflection, he reached up and felt the curved horns extruding from the top of his forehead. “These additions have no weight that I can feel—and yet there does seem to be substance. Miniature holo-force-field projections?”

  “Correct,” Aggadak replied. She set down the mirror.

  La Forge moved from interface to interface, leaning down and getting a better look. “The detail’s uncanny. This was one of Ardra’s characters.” He looked at Tuvok. “Say something again.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Aggadak, am I seeing this right?” La Forge pointed to the side of Tuvok’s mouth. “The devil image’s movements are a little out of sync with his words when he speaks.”

  “I knew you were bright.” The Nausicaan pointed to the cylindrical chamber. “The actor has to be digitally mapped in there before a projection can be accurately transferred. And I think it must help to have some skill at acting. There are many characters programmed in the system—even one for your Deanna Troi.”

  “Impressive,” Tuvok said, feeling the sleeves of his garment. The crimson cloak was there, and
yet not there. “The image is immaterial except when it needs to interact with a real surface.”

  “You’ve got it!” Aggadak clapped. “The secret to Houdini isn’t just that it can project its images from afar—through shields, through bulkheads, from orbit if it has to. What makes it work is its sensor package.”

  La Forge nodded. “It would have to have sophisticated sensors so it could read the environment the actor’s in. And it would have to sense the actor’s movements, in order to instantly map the holographic model around them.” He looked back at the chamber. “They were doing this twenty years ago.”

  “Longer,” Aggadak said. “The ship’s relatively new, but I’ve found systems aboard that date back a hundred years or more, just based on interfaces I’ve discovered. It’s just—different. I would call it an offshoot strain of holographic science.”

  La Forge studied the chamber and marveled. “I wish I’d had more time at Ventax.” He looked back at Aggadak. “You’ve been working here how long?”

  “I first opened the chamber ten years ago. I filed a report, but the Invasion . . . well, I’m not getting the resources I need.”

  “What resources have you been getting?” La Forge asked.

  “Um . . . let me think.” She raised a finger and began doing arithmetic in the air. “Ah, yes. In the past standard year, none.”

  “None?”

  “That’s right. This facility is where the flotsam of the sector collects, Commander, nothing more. My supervisor believes ‘research’ should only benefit the fleet.”

  Tuvok activated his tricorder. It was in his uniform’s pocket, but to the observers—and to himself—it appeared that he had found it in the folds of his devil’s cloak. He fine-tuned the settings.

  La Forge watched the devil with a tricorder and chuckled. “This is too weird. Can you turn that off, Aggadak?”

  “I think he looks all right.” She shrugged and walked back to the control station.

  “Look at this reading, Commander,” Tuvok said. “The same emissions we saw coming from Object Thirteen on H’atoria.”