by David Mack
It was Worf’s voice that drew him back into the moment.
“What are your orders, Captain?”
Picard sighed. “Captain Dax, suspend production of the minefield—but I want both our crews to continue looking for ways to safely collapse the subspace tunnels.”
“Aye, sir,” Dax said.
Nodding to the group, Picard added, “I’ll take all your recommendations under advisement and review them in my ready room. Captain Dax, I’ll contact you as soon as I’ve reached a decision.” He stood, and the others followed suit. “Dismissed.”
* * *
Captain Dax stood as the door to her ready room opened and Captain Picard strode in. She smiled. “Two visits in one day,” she said. “I feel special.”
He seemed less enthused about this visit. “I had considered delivering my decision over the comm,” he said as he stopped in front of her desk. “However, given the tenor of our last meeting, a follow-up visit seemed warranted.”
“I appreciate that,” Dax said. She motioned to a chair. “Have a seat, I’ll get you something from the replicator.”
Picard waved away the offer. “No, thank you.” He sat and gestured for her to join him. “I’ve apprised Admiral Nechayev of our tactical options, and the unacceptable risks of trying to implode the subspace tunnels at this time.”
Dax made a small nod. “And what did she say?”
“Teams at Starfleet Research and Development, the Daystrom Institute, and the Vulcan Science Academy are all working to find a safe means of destroying the subspace passages,” Picard said. “But until one is found, Admiral Nechayev agrees we should shift the front line of this war away from Federation space.”
“A counterattack,” Dax said.
“Precisely. Admiral Akaar is petitioning President Bacco to rally our allies and assemble an expeditionary force to take this fight to the Borg.”
Her brow creased with concern. “We can’t possibly conquer all of Borg space,” Dax said. “So what’s the strategy here?”
“A holding action,” Picard said. “We advance the front line to the other side of whichever aperture the Borg have been using to reach our space, and there we establish a stronghold. Our task then becomes to hold the line there until we have the means to collapse the passageways. Then we fall back and implode the subspace tunnels behind us.”
She frowned as she imagined spending the next several months engaged in a brutal, nerve-wracking battle of attrition. “I’m going to make an educated guess here,” she said. “Since we’ll need to know which aperture the Borg are using before we can launch a counteroffensive, Admiral Nechayev wants us to start scouting ahead through the passageways until we find it.”
“Correct,” said Picard.
“Calculating the frequency for opening each aperture takes time,” she said. “And it takes processing power. We’ll need to suspend our own research into imploding the tunnels if we want to start making scouting runs before our reinforcements arrive.”
“My second officer said as much before I beamed over,” Picard said, nodding. “So be it. We need to start scouting ahead for the expeditionary force as soon as possible. The Enterprise is still fourteen hours away from completing its repairs. How soon can the Aventine be ready to proceed?”
Dax activated her desktop monitor and checked the latest readiness report from Commander Bowers. “We’ll be done assisting your engineering teams in about five hours, but it might take longer than that to pick the lock on one of the passageways.”
“Then we’d best get started,” Picard said as he got up. “We have a long road ahead—but heaven help us all if the Borg strike the next blow before we do.”
5
“Why does Captain Picard hate me? What did I ever do to him?”
“I have no idea, ma’am.”
President Nanietta Bacco reclined her chair while her chief of staff, Esperanza Piñiero, stood facing her, barely inside the pool of amber light from the antique lamp on Bacco’s desk. Bacco shook her head as she continued to work through her denial. “An expeditionary force? Is he out of his mind?”
“Shostakova doesn’t think so,” Piñiero said, invoking the name of the secretary of defense. “It’s the first time Picard’s called for reinforcements since the Klingon civil war.”
The office comm made a soft double tone, which was followed by the voice of Bacco’s executive assistant, Sivak. “Madam President,” the elderly Vulcan man said. “Secretary Safranski is here.”
“Send him in,” Bacco said.
To her right, across the curved room, one of the office’s two doors to the reception area was unlocked by her senior protection agent, Steven Wexler, a trim and wiry ex-Starfleet officer who was shorter than average for a human male. What he lacked in height, however, he made up for with speed, security experience, and martial-arts expertise. As the door slid open, a broad slash of bright light poured in. Wexler stepped inside and moved to his left to admit the secretary of the exterior.
Safranski crossed the room in long strides as Wexler stepped out and shut the door behind him, once again steeping the sprawling executive space in deep shadows. Seconds later, as the Rigellian secretary breached the penumbra that surrounded Bacco’s desk, he nodded in salutation. “Madam President. We’re almost ready.”
Piñiero pounced, sparing Bacco the trouble. “How much longer till we get started?”
“Two minutes,” he said. “Five at most. I have my undersecretaries wrangling diplomats.”
Bacco arched one graying eyebrow in accusation. “And why didn’t you wrangle with them?”
“Oh, but I did, Madam President,” Safranski said. “I personally rousted Ambassador Zogozin from the Gorn Embassy in Berlin and escorted him back here, to the Roth Dining Room.”
The president showed him a forgiving smile. “Criticism withdrawn. Who are we waiting for?”
“Tezrene,” Safranski said with weary resignation.
“As always,” added Piñiero, who rolled her dark brown eyes. “So much for the stereotype of Tholian punctuality.”
Rising from her desk, Bacco replied, “There’s a difference between being late out of negligence and being late on purpose. I get the feeling this is a case of the latter.”
“Almost certainly,” Safranski said.
“What about Ambassador Emra?” asked Piñiero.
The secretary shook his head. “He won’t be joining us. The Tzenkethi recalled their entire embassy staff four days ago.”
“And when were they going to tell us?” Bacco replied.
“When we asked,” Safranski said. “Which was roughly fifteen minutes ago.” A low buzzing emanated from his torso. He grimaced with embarrassment, reached inside his jacket, and retrieved a personal communicator. “Excuse me, Madam President,” he said, accepting the incoming call with a press of his thumb. Into the device, he said, “Safranski. Go.” He listened, nodded, and replied, “Good. We’re on our way.” He thumbed the device into standby, tucked it back under his jacket, and said, “Tezrene just reached the table.”
Piñiero looked anxious. “Time to go to work.”
“Let’s get to it, then,” Bacco said, motioning with a sideways nod for Piñiero to follow her. As they walked past Safranski, she said to him, “Thanks for the wrangling.”
“My pleasure, Madam President.”
The door to the reception area opened a few seconds before Bacco reached it, and as she passed through into the lobby, she squinted against the sudden change in brightness. Agent Wexler fell into stride a few steps ahead of her, on her right. Piñiero remained on her left, matching her relaxed stride and purposeful expression, but the frown dimples in Piñiero’s cheeks betrayed her concern about the imminent summit.
They followed Wexler into a turbolift, which he set in motion with a whispered command through his implanted, subaural communicator.
The lift began its brief descent to the thirteenth floor of the Palais de la Concorde. “Esperanza,” Bacco said.
“The sound of gears turning inside your head is getting deafening. Out with it, before we reach the dining room.”
Piñiero said, “Out of nine ambassadors, I can only think of two we can really count on.”
“That many?” Noting her chief of staff’s aggrieved frown, she continued, “K’mtok and who else?”
“I figured Kalavak kind of owes us, after last year.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Bacco said. “Romulans aren’t known for their deep sense of gratitude. And if Martok hadn’t already ordered his fleets to our border, I’d tell you not to put your chips on K’mtok, either.”
The turbolift slowed.
“Shostakova says we can’t repel another full-scale attack without at least four of these states as allies.”
Bacco harrumphed. “She’s being optimistic. We need at least six of them on our side, or this war’s already over.”
Piñiero asked, “What are the odds of making that happen?”
“No idea. And if you find out, please don’t tell me.”
The turbolift doors opened, and Piñiero remained behind as Bacco and Wexler proceeded toward a towering scarlet curtain that concealed the lift from the rest of the dining room. Once she was through the artfully concealed gap in the curtains, it was only a few meters’ walk to the raised dais on which stood the president’s round table. It boasted fourteen seats around its polished, lacquered surface, which was composed of recycled wood recovered from sunken sailing vessels of ancient Earth. As Bacco had expected, the beauty of the table stood in stark contrast to the ire on the faces of those who surrounded it—nine ambassadors, all but one openly seething at having been summoned by Bacco on absurdly short notice.
Ambassador K’mtok was tall, broad, and brutish, even by Klingon standards. It had been Bacco’s experience that he loved using his height and prominently sharp incisors to intimidate other humanoids. Kalavak, his counterpart from the Romulan Star Empire, on the other hand, relied on his cold and unyielding stare to unnerve his political opponents. The two diplomats regarded each other with profound suspicion.
The one person at the summit whom Kalavak was pointedly ignoring was Ambassador Jovis, of the Imperial Romulan State. The former warbird commander had been appointed by Empress Donatra several weeks earlier, after the recognition of her government by the Klingon Empire had left the Federation little choice but to demonstrate solidarity with its ally by doing the same. Though Bacco had been careful to keep her government neutral in the internecine Romulan conflict, her decision to establish diplomatic relations with the nascent state had led to unavoidable resentment from Praetor Tal’Aura and, by extension, her diplomatic representative.
On the far side of the table from Bacco were the two ambassadors whose moods and reactions she had the most trouble understanding. Zogozin of the Gorn Hegemony frequently eschewed the use of the universal translator he had been offered, preferring instead to express himself with a series of hisses and growls. The archosaur’s facial expression seemed frozen, locked in a perpetual mask of predatory intensity. Because of her years of experience as the governor of Cestus III, Bacco knew that the emotional states of the Gorn were often expressed in thermal changes in the olive-scaled reptilians’ faces. Without the ability to see in the infrared spectrum, however, that knowledge did her little good at that moment.
Equally inscrutable to Bacco was the ever-tardy Tholian diplomat, Ambassador Tezrene. Hidden inside a shimmering suit of loose, golden Tholian silk whose interior was filled with searing-hot, high-pressure gases, Tezrene’s metallic shriek of a voice was translated by a vocoder that invariably rendered her speech into an ominous monotone.
Derro, the Ferengi Alliance’s ambassador to the Federation, was quiet for a change—but only because he found himself caught between the imposing presences of Breen Ambassador Gren and Talarian Ambassador Endar, both renowned as ruthless soldiers.
Then there was the one diplomat at the table who favored Bacco with a polite smile, and he was the one who she found most unnerving of them all—the eloquent and alarmingly intelligent ambassador from the Cardassian Union: Elim Garak.
He lifted his voice and silenced the room. “Everyone! Order, please! Our esteemed host has arrived.” He nodded to Bacco. “Madam President. I yield the floor.”
“Thank you, Ambassador Garak,” Bacco said, uneasy with the realization that he had already positioned himself as having done her a favor, thereby elevating his status in the room. He’s a crafty one, she reminded herself. Don’t give him an inch. “And my thanks to all of you for joining me here this evening.”
Endar, ever the epitome of boldness, declared, “This is about the Borg invasion of your space.”
Bacco made eye contact with the Talarian. “Yes, it is. The situation has escalated, and it now threatens all of us.”
Derisive sounds filled the air—a rasping hiss from Zogozin, a crackling squawk from Gren’s vocoder, and a shrill scrape of noise from Tezrene. “Do not drag us into your war,” said the Tholian ambassador. “Your conflict with the Borg is an internal matter, and of no concern to us.”
Tezrene’s comments seemed to fuel K’mtok’s anger, and it left both the Romulan representatives silent and guarded, watching with caution to see what happened next.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Bacco replied. “In the past day, the Borg have launched an attack against the Klingon world of Khitomer, and they have a history of striking worlds inside Romulan space. Given the scope of their latest actions, it would be foolish to think their campaign would be limited to Federation planets.”
Derro cowered and nodded, as usual aligning himself with the most recent strong opinion spoken aloud. Then he flinched as Gren spoke; the Breen’s voice was harsh and mechanical through his helmet’s snout-shaped speaker. “The Federation and its Klingon allies have a history of provoking the Borg,” the Breen said. “And the Romulans’ expansion in the Beta Quadrant may have done the same. But no Breen vessel or citizen has ever been a foe of the Borg.”
“Of course not,” said K’mtok, his gravelly voice like a cutting saw. “You’ve been too busy hiding.”
Zogozin growled, and then he said through a razor-sharp smile of gleaming-white fangs, “Why does Qo’noS still send an ambassador here? Didn’t the Federation annex your empire?”
K’mtok reached for his d’k tahg and found only its empty sheath on his belt. “Count yourself lucky,” he said to the Gorn. “If our hosts hadn’t disarmed us—”
“Enough!” snapped Garak. “This posturing is useless.”
Kalavak narrowed his eyes at Garak. “Curious,” he said, the cultured inflection of his voice rife with implied mockery. “I should not have expected the infamous Elim Garak to be such an ardent friend of the Federation.”
Garak’s stare bordered on maniacal, and he spoke with such soft courtesy that his words cut like knives. “My dear ambassador, I am an ardent friend only of self-preservation, common sense, and the general welfare of the Cardassian Union. We all share the same charge—to advocate and negotiate on behalf of our peoples. Petty bickering does not become us.”
“Indeed, it does not,” agreed Jovis, who met Kalavak’s glare with his own cool gaze. “The Imperial Romulan State is willing to put aside past enmities and seek new alliances.”
Unable to contain his contempt for Jovis, Kalavak asked, “And is Empress Donatra prepared to offer reparations to the Romulan Empire? Will she release the worlds she took hostage?”
Before Jovis could answer, K’mtok shouldered his way between them and jabbed at Kalavak with his index finger. “If any reparations are to be made, they will be made by your Praetor Tal’Aura for the attack on Klorgat IV!”
“Ah, yes,” Kalavak said. “Because the Klingon Empire made itself the guardian of all Remans. What was Martok thinking when he did that? Was he running short of jeghpu’wI’?”
Bacco cast a summoning glance at Agent Wexler as K’mtok stalked toward Kalavak.
“At leas
t when Remans go to war, they fight their own battles,” the Klingon said, clenching his fists.
As the two ambassadors squared off, Jovis and the others moved back. K’mtok cocked his fist and threw a punch at Kalavak, who deflected the attack, grabbed the Klingon’s wrist, and twisted it as he reached for K’mtok’s throat.
Then came a blur of movement and the rapid patter of falling blows, and both ambassadors were on the floor, meters apart, still conscious but dazed. Agent Wexler stood between them, his hands empty and his dark suit as pristine as ever.
Bacco’s eyes hadn’t been fast enough to note the details of Wexler’s thrashing of the two men, but she was determined to take advantage of the precious seconds of shocked silence that followed it. “I didn’t summon you people here to argue among yourselves,” she said. “I called you here to make you understand your role in what’s about to become our mutual fight for survival.”
She began circling around the table, staring down each ambassador, one by one, as she continued. “The Borg invasion isn’t an internal Federation problem, and it’s not a localized threat. If the Federation falls, there will be nothing standing between the Borg Collective and all of you. The Borg have no allies. They don’t make nonaggression pacts. They honor no truces, no cease-fires. They don’t consider the enemy of their enemy to be anything except another target. The Borg conquer, assimilate, and destroy.”
As she passed by Kalavak, she saw Wexler help the ambassador back to his feet. K’mtok, in a rare display of humility, permitted Jovis to lend him a hand. Stopping between the two bruised diplomats, she finished, “I’m not asking you to sign any permanent treaties. All I want you to do is be smart enough to know when we ought to unite for our common survival. This isn’t politics, goddammit—this is life and death. Take up arms and fight, or lie down and die.” She looked around the table and still found it impossible to gauge the nonhumans’ reactions by visual cues, but she had no choice but to continue. “It’s time to put this to a vote. Show of hands: Who’s ready to stand with us? Who’s ready to join the fight for survival?”