by David Mack
A chorus of shouting voices tried to respond and fell silent only when one succeeded in drowning them out. “We’ve given Picard everything we can,” Admiral Jellico said. “But we still have to be ready for a dozen other scenarios. And if we learned anything from the Dominion War, it’s not to leave the core systems undefended.”
The conversation devolved into another round of side-by-side debates between admirals and undersecretaries from the Department of the Exterior. Bored with the round-robin argument, Seven considered walking away and returning to her regeneration alcove, just to see if anyone noticed.
All the admirals looked crisp and polished, while their subordinates had the frazzled, harried look of people who had been worn down by dodging a nonstop fusillade of enemy fire. Fearful looks haunted their faces.
The spacious, high-tech facility was rank with the odors of stale sweat and unwashed uniforms. Plastic cups, half full of cold coffee, littered every level surface. Against the backdrop of gleaming machines and towering display screens, the biological occupants of the facility looked soft, fragile, and slow to Seven’s unforgiving eye.
Her patience expired, and she timed her declaration to fill an anticipated conversational lull. “Captain Picard’s plan is fatally flawed,” she said in a raised voice, silencing the admirals and the politicians alike.
“Finally, we agree on something,” Jellico grumbled.
Admiral Nechayev cocked an eyebrow and adopted a defensive tone and posture toward Seven. “Would you care to explain that assertion, Miss Hansen?”
She ignored Nechayev’s dismissive use of her former appellation. “Captain Picard—and by extension, this admiralty—proceeds from a false assumption. Your expeditionary force will not be sufficient to repel a full-scale Borg invasion.”
Admiral Hastur—an olive-skinned, red-eyed, white-haired Rigellian flag officer with a reputation for strategic prowess—protested, “President Bacco is recruiting more allies for the task force right now. When we’re ready, we’ll have enough firepower to hold the line.”
“No, Admiral, you won’t.”
Flustered, Hastur replied, “It’s not as if we’re trying to invade Unimatrix 01! All we have to do is hold one choke point until we can seal the breach in our defenses.”
“Irrelevant,” Seven said. “If your task force fails to find the Borg staging area before they begin their final invasion, your preparations will be for naught. And if they do locate the staging area, they will be forced to engage hundreds of Borg cubes. Your recent losses should make it clear that you are ill-equipped to fight even one Borg cube at a time.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Nakamura, who looked far too smug for his own good. “We have the transphasic torpedo. One shot, one kill.”
She directed her stern gaze at Nakamura, and for a moment she almost felt pity for him. “The Borg will adapt to your new weapon, Admiral. The only question is how long it will take. To survive a full-scale counteroffensive, your fleet will be forced to expend hundreds of transphasic warheads in a matter of minutes. The Borg will sacrifice as many cubes as necessary to devise a defense.”
Seven paced slowly behind the admirals and civilian security advisers, all of whom tensed as she walked by. “There is no way that you can destroy the entire Borg Collective quickly enough to prevent them from adapting.” She dropped her voice and spoke into Nakamura’s ear as she passed him. “They will learn to defend themselves from your weapon.” To Hastur, she said, “Then they will assimilate it.” She continued past Nechayev, the only one of the admirals who had been sensible enough to demand moderation in the use of the transphasic warheads, and told Jellico, “And then they will turn it against you, and destroy you.”
He bristled at her prediction. “So what do you suggest we do? Retreat?”
Without humor, she replied, “Yes.”
Jellico lifted his arms and looked around in feigned confusion. “To where?”
“Anywhere you can,” Seven said. “Some of the subspace tunnels the Enterprise discovered might lead to other galaxies. If you can isolate such a passage and collapse the others before the Borg have a chance to invade, you could organize a mass evacuation of the Federation.”
Seven’s governmental superior, security adviser Jas Abrik, looked horrified. “Are you insane?” the Trill man bellowed. “You want us to abandon the Milky Way galaxy to the Borg?”
Jellico, who was standing next to Abrik, rolled his eyes away from Seven, shook his head in disgust, and said, “This is why we don’t let civilians write the battle plans.” Snorts and chortles of dismissive laughter spread like a virus through the room, all of it at Seven’s expense. Then Jellico turned his back on her and said to the others, “Let’s keep working.”
Seven had no conscious plan or moment of premeditation. In a snap of action, she locked her right arm around Admiral Jellico’s throat. She pulled him backward, off balance. Borg assimilation tubules extended from the steely implant still grafted to her left hand as she pressed her fingertips against his jugular. The tubules hovered above his skin but did not penetrate it—yet.
Around her and the admiral, the combat operations center became deathly quiet.
“If you do not escape beyond the Borg’s reach, you will never be safe,” she said, all but hissing the words into the trembling man’s ear. “They know where you are, and they are now committed to your annihilation. Even if you collapse the subspace tunnels, they can still reach you by normal warp travel. It may take them decades. Perhaps even a century. But they will come. And when they do, your civilization will be eradicated. All that you have built, all that you have labored to preserve, will be erased from history. You cannot stop them, ever. As long as they exist, you will never be free.”
The terror in Jellico’s eyes was the same one she saw in her own when she awoke from nightmarish hallucinations during her regeneration cycles.
It was her only real fear: I will never be free.
Behind her back, the rising whine of charging phaser rifles cut through the silence. A security officer said in a carefully mannered voice, “Professor Hansen, let the admiral go. Now.” She looked over her shoulder at the man, who met her gaze with his own unblinking stare. “Please release the admiral, Miss Hansen.”
They will not listen to reason, Seven decided. So be it. She retracted her assimilation tubules and removed her arm from Jellico’s throat. “I trust I made my point clearly, Admiral?”
“Get out of here before I have you shot,” Jellico said, massaging his bruised windpipe.
The security guards advanced to within a few meters of Seven and kept their weapons aimed at her. One of them said, “Please proceed to turbolift four, Miss Hansen.”
She met Jellico’s furious stare. “You are only postponing the inevitable. When the Borg have the Federation by the throat, they will not release it—they will destroy it.”
Jellico scowled. “Over our dead bodies.”
“Precisely,” Seven said.
* * *
Ambassador Derro was an old-fashioned Ferengi. He liked his profits large, his females naked, and his lobes stroked every night before bed.
All those pleasures had been in short supply during the reign of Grand Nagus Rom, however. Rom had granted Ferengi females the privilege to walk about in all manner of garb, and they had been invested with the right to work and earn profit. With those opportunities they had gained a new independence, and Derro’s harem of solicitous females had evaporated all but overnight. Worst of all, he had spent the past few years cut off from the vast profits of the arms trade, as a consequence of being relegated to the pacifistic, economically backward world known as Earth.
He searched his memory for any clue as to what he might have done to anger Grand Nagus Rom. A grudge was the only explanation he could think of for his exile on this rock without profit. Rom, of course, had saddled Derro with the diplomatic posting as if it were a gift. As the Grand Nagus had smiled and waxed ecstatic about how much
he expected Derro to learn about humanity and the Federation, Derro had suspected that Rom was either the most diabolically clever charlatan ever to occupy the nagal residence, or he was the most dangerous simpleton ever to stumble lobes-backward into power.
Derro’s shuttlepod pilot, a Bolian woman named Doss, snapped him back from his bitter reverie by asking, “Is everything all right, Mister Ambassador?”
“Yes, Doss, I’m fine.” He watched the rain slash against the shuttlepod’s cockpit windshield. “This weather just makes me think of home, is all.”
A male comm voice squawked from the overhead speaker, “Ferenginar Transport, you’re cleared to land on pad three.”
Doss activated the reply channel. “Acknowledged, Palais Control. Down in T minus ten. Ferenginar Transport out.”
Outside the cockpit window, Derro saw nothing except a gray curtain of fog and rain. Then the façade of the Palais de la Concorde emerged like a phantom that quickly became solid, and Doss guided their two-seat transport pod inside the Palais’s lower-level docking area. Ground crews with lit batons waved the transport to an air-soft landing.
The side hatch unlocked and opened with a loud pneumatic hiss and a hydraulic whine. Derro unfastened his safety restraint and got up. “Keep the engine running,” he said. “I won’t be long.” He slipped between their seats and made his way out of the pod and down the ramp, to a waiting detail of four Federation plainclothes security personnel.
One of them, the leader, was a tall human female who had pale skin and a tightly wrapped bun of chalk-white hair. She hid her eyes with a black, wraparound sunshade, and her lean physique was concealed by the kind of dark suit that served as a uniform for President Bacco’s protection agents. “Your Excellency,” she said. “The president’s expecting you. Please follow me to the transporter station.” Without waiting for his reply, she turned and began walking in long strides toward the core of the Palais.
Derro followed her, and he heard the other three agents—all men: a Vulcan, an Andorian, and a Trill—fall into step around him. He was uncertain whether their presence was intended to make him feel protected or intimidated. In a peculiar way, it managed to do both at the same time.
They reached an internal transporter node, the kind that was used for secure site-to-site beaming inside a protected environment such as the Palais, which was surrounded by a scattering field to prevent unauthorized transports in or out. The albino female ushered Derro onto the platform. As soon as he’d found his place on the energizer pad, he turned back and saw the Vulcan initiate the dematerialization sequence. Good, he thought. I hate long good-byes.
A white haze erased the transport level from his sight and replaced it in a slow fade with the luxurious confines of the lobby on the uppermost level of the Palais. As the shimmer of the transporter beam faded and its confinement field released him, he found himself being greeted by a beefy, dark-haired human male who wore a familiar style of dark suit. “Welcome, Ambassador,” the man said, motioning Derro toward the nearby door to President Bacco’s office. “We apologize for the short notice.” At the door, they stopped. “Just a moment, sir.”
On the far side of the lobby, the other door to Bacco’s office opened, and Zogozin, the Gorn ambassador, was escorted out by a man whom Derro recognized as Bacco’s senior bodyguard, Agent Wexler. Zogozin halted, turned, and looked directly at Derro, who reacted with a nervous smile. The archosaur answered the gesture with bared fangs.
Then a transporter effect began dissolving Zogozin, and the door in front of Derro opened.
Derro stepped inside, followed by the agent. President Bacco crossed the room to meet Derro. She pressed her wrists together, palms up, fingers curled inward. “My house is my house,” she said, offering a traditional Ferengi salutation.
“As are its contents,” Derro replied, imitating her gesture of greeting. He was secretly impressed that Bacco had made the effort to learn this peculiar domestic ritual of his people. In keeping with tradition, he reached inside his jacket pocket, removed a strip of latinum, and handed it to Bacco as the price of admission for a private audience in her official sanctum.
“Thank you for coming, Your Excellency,” she said, pocketing the strip. She walked back to her desk. “Come, sit.”
He followed her and settled into one of her guest chairs. “The Grand Nagus has ordered all armed Ferengi ships to your aid,” he said. “Though he regrets their numbers are so few.”
“I’m grateful to the Grand Nagus for all his efforts,” Bacco said. Despite the fact that she was swathed in clothes, and that her tiny lobes were mostly concealed by her close-cut, paper-white hair, she radiated authority. “However, I’ve asked you here to discuss a more urgent and … sensitive matter.”
She waved over a young Trill female and an Orion man who had been lingering on the far side of the room. The pair approached carrying trays that were loaded with foodstuffs. Only when they had reached the president’s desk and set down the trays did Derro realize he had been presented with a smorgasbord of Ferengi delicacies: jellied gree-worms, live tube-grubs, soft-shelled Kytherian crabs, and an ice-cold Slug-O-Cola.
“Now I know you want something big,” he said, flashing a snaggle-toothed maw and plucking a crab from the plate.
“Correct,” she said, as the aides withdrew and left the room. “I’ve persuaded Ambassador Zogozin to remind Imperator Sozzerozs that the Gorn Hegemony stood with the Federation against the Dominion, and benefited from that decision. Zogozin believes that Sozzerozs will choose to side with us again.”
Derro’s teeth had pierced the crab’s tender shell just before Bacco began her revelation about the Gorn. Now the feisty crustacean writhed in his jaw as he sat paralyzed by the news that she had completely reversed Zogozin’s position. He withdrew his bite from the pincered delicacy in his hand. “How, may I ask, did you persuade Ambassador Zogozin of this?”
“The specifics aren’t important right now,” she said. “What matters is that we have our coalition for the expeditionary force. However, there’s another matter for which the Federation needs the help of the Ferengi Alliance, and we’ll be extremely grateful if you and the Grand Nagus can assist us.”
He took a solid chomp out of the crab. Masticating the crunchy treat into paste, he asked, “What do you need? A loan?”
“Not at the moment. What we need you to do is cut the Tholians off at the knees, and quickly.”
His throat tensed as he tried to swallow, and he struggled to force the mouthful of food down so he could speak again. “Excuse me, Madam President? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Bacco got up and walked around to his side of the desk. “We’ve made our deal with the Cardassians, and I expect to have Gorn ships in the Azure Nebula the day after tomorrow.” She sat back against the edge of the desk. “But I know the Tholians, Your Excellency. They’ve been waiting for a chance to stab us in the back, and now is probably the best chance they’ve had in decades. The only way to stop them is to isolate them—contain them on all fronts, without angering the other local powers.”
He washed the dry, sour taste of fear from his mouth with a sugary, slimy swig of Slug-O-Cola. “What does that have to do with Ferenginar, Madam President?”
“I’m glad you asked,” she said. “The best chance the Tholians have of undermining us is to ally with the Breen and harass our border. But that won’t happen if the Breen have already committed the bulk of their forces to another battle.”
Every time she spoke, the situation seemed to get worse. “I’m still not following, Madam President. Are you suggesting the Ferengi Alliance start a war with the Breen Confederacy?”
“Of course not,” Bacco said. “I’m saying you have so few ships at your disposal that you need the Breen’s help to press the fight against the Borg.” She reached over and pinched a fingerful of tube grubs from the bowl on the tray. “The Federation Council would never let me hire Breen mercenaries for the expeditionary force. But the Grand Nagus ca
n take whatever steps he deems necessary to protect his people.”
Derro was flabbergasted. “Striking bargains with the Breen is risky business, Madam President.”
“The riskier the road, the greater the profit, Your Excellency.” Before he could compliment her invocation of the Sixty-second Rule of Acquisition, she continued, “If the Grand Nagus’s foresight—and yours—leads to the continued safety and survival of the Federation … the Ferengi Alliance would prove itself to be a steady and trusted ally. Naturally, allies rank ahead of neutral powers when the Federation Council determines which states receive most-favored trade status.” She popped the grubs into her mouth.
He took another healthy bite out of his crab, savored it, and swallowed. “So … what you’re saying is, you’d like us to subcontract your war and leave the Tholians with no friends.”
“Exactly.”
“Sounds profitable.” He sleeved the greasy bits of shell from his mouth. “What about that loan? I can guarantee very good terms, and I have a few ideas about modernizing the Federation’s economy that I’d love to share with you.”
“Maybe next time,” Bacco said.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. He got up. “If you’ll excuse me, Madam President, I have to go make a business proposition to Ambassador Gren.”
She pressed her wrists together to bid him farewell. “Don’t let him try to charge you extra for torpedoes.”
“Give my lobes more credit than that,” Derro said, returning the valedictory gesture. “When I get done with Gren, the Breen will be buying their torpedoes from me.”
* * *
Less than two hours after Ambassador Derro had left her office, Nanietta Bacco’s attention to a report from Starfleet was broken by the sharp buzzing of the intercom.
It was followed by the voice of her assistant, Sivak. “Madam President, Tholian Ambassador Tezrene is here to see you. She appears to be in a rare state of heightened dudgeon.”