by David Mack
“Hm.” At first his reaction was inscrutable. Then he gave a slight nod. “Yes. That makes sense. I can ask my friend Louis on Earth to let me know of any opportunities that might arise in the private sector, and there’s bound to be a university somewhere in the Federation that’ll need a new professor of archaeology at some point in the next decade.” He cracked a smile. “If worse comes to worst, we can always move back to the vineyard in Labarre.”
Unable to hide her incredulity, she arched one eyebrow at her husband. “You seem to be taking this in stride. To be honest, I expected you to put up more of a fight.”
He picked up his wine, enjoyed a generous sip, then put down the glass. “Beverly . . . I’ve given more than six decades of my life to Starfleet. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that perhaps that’s enough.” He spread his napkin back across his lap and picked up his fork and knife. “In any event, as you said, it’s not a decision to be made in haste. We have time.”
Crusher was surprised to find her husband so receptive to the idea of returning to civilian life, and the ease with which he’d entertained the notion of casting aside his Starfleet career troubled her. As she watched him dig back into his dinner, she put a name to another feeling that was nagging at her: disappointment. The realization of her own hidden agenda gave her pause.
On some level, I was actually hoping he’d talk me out of it.
Before she could say anything to reopen the discussion, the overhead comm chirped and was followed by Worf’s voice. “Bridge to Captain Picard.”
The captain put down his utensils on his plate. “Picard here.”
“Captain. You are needed on the bridge. We have new orders from Starfleet.”
“On my way. Picard out.” He pushed his chair back and leaned across the table’s corner to kiss the top of Crusher’s head. “Duty calls.” As Crusher watched her husband hurry out, she found it impossible to imagine him being happy anywhere but on the Enterprise.
• • •
Looking out of place in gray trousers and a natural-linen shirt, Picard compensated by taking charge of the bridge with his voice as he emerged from the turbolift. “Number One: Report.”
Worf stood from the center chair and turned to face Picard. “Federation Security has issued a full-sector alert. One of its patrol ships, a two-man vessel called the Sirriam, vanished without a trace two days ago in the Tirana system, two-point-two light-years from here.” Picard settled into his command chair and called up the official orders from Starfleet Command. Worf sat down in his own chair and continued as Picard read. “Starfleet Command has instructed all vessels in this sector to aid the search. The Enterprise is the closest vessel to the Sirriam’s last known coordinates. Admiral T’Vos has ordered us to suspend our experiments and investigate.”
Picard was alarmed to find Starfleet’s official tactical report sparse on details. “Has there been any contact with suspected threat vessels in or around the Tirana system?”
“Negative.” Perhaps anticipating Picard’s next question, the Klingon added, “Glinn Dygan has completed an astrometric survey of the sector and found no anomalies that could account for the ship’s disappearance. Lieutenant Šmrhová is monitoring known Typhon Pact frequencies, but we have detected no enemy signal traffic in the area.”
It seemed to Picard that his first officer had matters well in hand. “What do we know about the Tirana system, Number One?”
“Not much.” He swiveled his chair aft, toward Lieutenant T’Ryssa Chen, who was working at the master systems display.
The half-Vulcan, half-human contact specialist noted Worf’s turn in her direction, and she stepped forward to address him and the captain. “Tirana’s an A3 IV main sequence star. Seven planets: three rocky inner worlds, of which one is molten and the other two lack atmospheres, plus four gas giants. No indigenous life-forms, no known inhabitants.”
“What would they have been doing there?” Picard wondered aloud.
Chen treated his rhetorical musing as a serious inquiry. “Their flight plan indicated it was a routine checkpoint on their assigned patrol route. They might have encountered smugglers, or detected a cloaked Typhon Pact ship, or tried to aid a civilian vessel in distress, or—”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Worf cut in, silencing her torrent of hypotheses. He looked at Picard. “Until we have reason to believe otherwise, Captain, I recommend we treat this as a rescue operation—in which case, time will be of the essence.”
As usual, Worf’s reading of the circumstances agreed with Picard’s. “Quite right, Number One.” He raised his voice. “Helm, set course for the Tirana system, maximum warp. Engage.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Joanna Faur replied as she took the Enterprise to warp speed, filling the ship with the rising drone of its faster-than-light acceleration.
Glinn Dygan looked up from the ops console and seemed almost sad as he watched warp-stretched stars snap past on the main viewscreen. “A pity we didn’t get to finish our experiments. It would have been a most remarkable thing to see.” With a muted note of pessimism he added, “Assuming, of course, that it actually worked this time.”
That might have been a bit much to hope for, Picard suspected. Something about the mission to Azeban V had never felt quite right to him. No matter how many times he’d reviewed the scientific briefs for the experiment, he had been unable to persuade himself that they were even remotely plausible. He was hardly an authority on subquantum chromodynamics and their applications to the spontaneous inception of metaphasic radiation, but he’d embraced the assignment with more than a small degree of doubt for its success. Now, the haste with which Starfleet had ordered such an involved experiment abandoned only compounded his suspicions.
He stood to head for the turbolift, then stopped beside Worf. “Have security and medical personnel prepared to initiate rescue protocols as soon as we reach the Tirana system. Make sure we have EVA suits ready, in case we need to send them into vacuum or a hostile environment. Also, have Commander La Forge prep engineering for a salvage operation.”
“Aye, sir.” Worf glanced toward Šmrhová, then back to the captain. “I recommend we also prepare tactical response plans—in case this turns out not to be a salvage-and-rescue.”
It was a wise precaution that Picard himself had been about to order. “Make it so. You have the conn, Number One.” Leaving Worf to ready the ship for whatever lay ahead, Picard walked back to the turbolift, determined to make the most of what might be his last quiet night alone with his wife and son before the vagaries of command tore him away once more.
4
Sequestered and shielded from accidental eavesdropping and curious eyes, Thot Konar powered up the subspace transmitter inside his quarters. He tuned its frequency with delicate nudges on its sensitive controls. Almost as an afterthought, he confirmed the encryption cipher was locked in, a safeguard upon which the mission and all their lives depended. The channel was open, but the response was slow. Konar feared he was transmitting in vain, that no one would answer, and he would be doomed to end his days entombed with Hain in this bunker.
Don’t give in to paranoia. It was a simple mantra, but one he needed.
His encrypted hail was received, and in a fleeting crackle of static, his superior answered. Even though, in theory, only Thot Tran should have access to this comm channel, his challenge code appeared on the screen, affirming his identity and assuaging Konar’s anxieties. “Your transmission is late,” said the director of the SRD. “What is Korwat’s mission status?”
“All is proceeding on schedule.” Konar relayed a data packet with the latest metrics from the base’s internal monitors. “Units One through Four have been activated, and preliminary field tests have been promising. However, my operations manager insists we need at least another six hours to be certain that all systems will perform as intended in the field.”
“Unacceptable. We have to compensate for a tactical error committed by the Spetzkar. In order to c
apitalize on our best opportunities, we need to proceed without delay.”
Konar had suspected that the recent changes to the mission’s timeline had been the consequence of a blunder by the Spetzkar, the elite special forces of the Breen military, with whose “assistance” the SRD had been saddled since the start of this hastily conceived operation. Now he knew for certain. “I am aware of the inflexibility of our schedule, sir. However, I concur with Chot Hain’s assessment: If we spend the necessary minimum time in preparation now, we can avoid far costlier and less predictable delays that might arise later.”
His argument was met by a long moment of silent contemplation from Tran. “As you’ve said, Konar, our timetable is not flexible.”
“And what of our deployment plans? Are they also beyond discussion?” He called up several scenarios designed to govern the actions of assets in the field and patched them through to Tran on a split-screen feed. “I’ve reviewed these protocols and found them wanting.”
His accusation was answered by defensive hostility. “In what respects?”
“They have no clear terms of engagement. Most of them have omitted several critical details of infrastructure or local geography. All but one lacks anything resembling a realistic exit strategy. Committing our agents on these terms will expose them to unnecessary risks.”
“It is not for you to decide what risks are necessary. That choice belongs to the domo.”
Tran’s rebuttal left Konar floundering for a response. Until that moment, he had never heard the authority of the domo himself invoked in connection to Operation Zelazo. If the domo was involved in the planning of the mission, then any further objections Konar might make would only serve to blemish his military record beyond repair. “I didn’t realize the domo was aware of our operational details, or that its sacrifices were intentional.”
“In the future, you might find it beneficial to obey orders rather than debate them.”
Konar bowed his head. “Understood, sir.” Mustering what remained of his courage, he asked, “Can you clarify how Chot Hain and I are to execute these protocols? Our only desire is to carry out our orders and achieve our objectives, but we see no viable path to those goals.”
His request was met by a disdainful downward dip of Tran’s helmet. “You disappoint me, Konar. We assigned you four of the BID’s finest field operatives, agents renowned for their abilities at improvisation and adaptation. Do you really have so little faith in them?”
The question was a rhetorical snare into which Konar refused to stumble. “It’s for their sake alone that I ask these questions, sir. I don’t want to squander such precious resources by relying upon faulty assumptions or outdated intelligence.”
“Save your questions.” Tran’s patience had clearly expired. “Bring your facility on line and deploy those assets. It’s time to strike—before our enemies realize what we’re really doing.”
• • •
When the hour came for Hilar Tohm’s second meeting with Commander Data, she found herself in the position of being the latter to arrive. Nestled in one of the poorer quarters of Orion’s capital city, the basement-level bar she’d selected for their rendezvous was dark and seedy but nowhere near as dangerous as it appeared. This late at night, however, it was packed with an odd mix of petty criminals and corrupt police, dabo hustlers and fleshmongers, out-of-work session musicians and fresh-from-work cooks and bussers from nearby restaurants, as well as a minor legion of alcoholics ranging from the highly functional to the barely conscious.
As agreed, Data was alone in the last booth at the end of the room, with his back to the wall and his eyes on Tohm from the moment she stepped through the front door. She sat on the banquette opposite his and folded her hands as she leaned forward. Heady fumes wafted up from his glass, and she wrinkled her nose at the potent perfume of alcohol. “What’re you drinking?”
“Based on my oral analysis of the compound’s ingredients, I have surmised this is the bartender’s failed attempt to mix a Saurian Slammer. His ratio of Saurian brandy to Delovian nectar seems to have been inverted, and he failed to finish the recipe with the traditional dash of Arcturian bitters. If your question was a solicitation for a suggestion, I cannot recommend this.”
“Noted.” Her delicate fingers snaked up her jacket’s sleeve and inside the fold of her shirt cuff, from which she retrieved an isolinear chip that she palmed and slid across the table to Data with expert sleight of hand. “The intel you wanted.”
Data laid his hand over hers, as if they were intimates sharing a moment of comfort in contact. “Bless you.” He let her slip her hand free, leaving the chip behind under his palm, and then he drew his hand back to his side and pocketed the chip. “Were there any complications?”
She shrugged off the question. “Nothing insurmountable.” Watching his face for any sign of betrayed emotion, she added, “I have to admit, I was impressed by the sheer volume of raw data we found on this Vaslovik and his aliases. Who is he to you?”
“An acquaintance of interest.”
His emotional control was absolute, showing not a hint of what might lurk beneath his surface. Tohm remained committed to drawing him out, somehow. “He’s quite a peculiar fellow. I’m intrigued by some of the implications in his financial history. If I’m reading those reports correctly, he has to have been around for an unusually long time—centuries, at least. But his profile lists him as human. Did I miss something, or does that seem a bit strange?”
“I would be the first to admit that Mister Vaslovik is a singular subject.”
The android’s face gave away no secrets, but his evasiveness in the face of leading questions was telling, so Tohm pressed harder. “Even more remarkable is the fact that when I tried to run a cross-referenced search on Mister Vaslovik, there wasn’t a shred of information about him or any of his aliases in Starfleet’s databases. And that’s odd, since almost every known person in recorded history has at least some kind of abridged biographical extract. But not your subject. He might as well be a figment of our imaginations for all Starfleet claims to know about him. . . . Which would make sense if his virtual history had been, shall we say, expunged.”
“A fascinating hypothesis,” Data said, artfully neither confirming nor denying any aspect of her supposition. “Not one I recommend you pursue, however.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Her accusatory question seemed to amuse him. “A great many things. For the most part, I am doing you a favor. The less you know about Vaslovik’s life and work, the safer you will be.”
“No doubt.” He sounded sincere, but Tohm had met too many expert liars in her career to accept his assurances at face value. “Your concern for my safety is touching, Commander, but in my line of work, knowledge is power. I’ve taken some serious risks to get these records for you. A bit of quid pro quo doesn’t seem like much to ask in return.”
He frowned. “Things are not always what they seem.” He shimmied out of the booth, stood, and offered her his hand. “Thank you for your help. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
It was time to concede rhetorical defeat. She shook his hand. “You’re welcome.”
“Good-bye.” He let go of her hand and walked away down a dim, narrow hallway to the bar’s rear exit. Tohm heard the door open, admitting the dull roar of the city night, and then it slammed shut, filling the hallway with echoes. So much for getting a straight answer.
An Orion waitress, barely out of her teens and so rail-thin that it made Tohm want to break the girl like a dry twig, shuffled in lazy steps to stand beside the booth. She looked down at Tohm, her eyes half-closed from either exhaustion or boredom. “What can I bring you?”
“Nothing. I was just leaving.”
The green-skinned youth rolled her eyes, as if this were the greatest imposition she’d ever suffered, and then she slouched away to annoy some other customer. Tohm got up from the booth and left the bar by the front entrance, emerging onto a sidewalk bustling wit
h pedestrian traffic, a dense mix of tourists and locals, Orions and offworlders, all jumbled together.
Swallowed up and made anonymous by the steady current of moving bodies, Tohm walked without fear down familiar streets, following a well-known route back to the Federation Embassy. Hands tucked into her pockets, head down, she felt all but invisible in the night . . . and yet, just as she had the last time she’d met with Data, she felt a sudden rush of paranoia, an inescapable sensation of being observed and tracked. Making use of reflections in vehicles’ windshields and storefronts’ windows, she searched for any sign of her shadow, only to once again find herself seeking after phantoms.
Her unease abated only slightly as she reached the embassy gate, flashed her identicard to the Starfleet sentries, and passed through to the secure diplomatic compound. Safe once more on friendly ground, she cast a final look back at the street, only to find her fears still at large.
Searching the night for a threat she couldn’t name, she recalled a bit of advice she’d been given years earlier by one of her first mentors inside Starfleet Intelligence: Never go looking for danger, he’d told her. It’ll find you soon enough all on its own.
5
Hours had passed since the Enterprise’s arrival in the Tirana system, and the crew had used every moment since then to execute their most intensive search patterns and thorough sensor sweeps, all to no avail. Worf stalked from one bridge station to the next, hoping at each stop to receive welcome if belated news of progress, but no one had anything positive to report.
Chen had reconfigured the bridge’s aft consoles to search for subspace transmissions, distress signals on any and all known frequencies, any sign of artificial interference, and naturally occurring subspace radio “dead zones,” but she had found the Tirana system quiet except for the constant scratch of cosmic background radiation. Šmrhová had found no evidence of wreckage, debris, or energy emissions consistent with beam weapons or high-yield detonations, such as plasma charges or photon torpedoes, and Dygan’s meticulous survey of the surface of Tirana II, an airless world that had been deemed more habitable than Tirana I solely by virtue of the fact that its surface wasn’t a molten hell, had yielded no sign of the missing Federation Security interceptor Sirriam, or its two patrol officers.