by David Mack
Bashir nudged Sarina’s arm and nodded at a handful of what looked like Breen civilians heading inside the spaceport. They wore helmets similar to those used by the Breen military and its privateers, but instead of armor they were attired in drab, utilitarian clothes, boots, and gloves. Every square centimeter of their bodies was covered. “If we follow them, they might lead us to the colony,” he said.
“It’s worth a try.”
They trailed the quartet of civilians into a high-ceilinged facility that was alive with echoing footsteps and an oppressive droning caused by reverberations from the Breen’s vocoders. A few armed Breen soldiers stood watch at various points on different levels of the facility. The place felt glumly efficient. Unarmed but uniformed Breen personnel ushered civilians through security checkpoints, verified identichips, and scanned both incoming and outgoing cargo and luggage.
Unable to see past the dense knot of people ahead of them at the security checkpoint, Bashir asked Sarina, “Can you see where they’re going once they reach the other side?”
“No. But I don’t see an exit on the other side, do you?”
“No,” Bashir said.
He wondered if perhaps he and Sarina had taken a wrong turn. Though he hadn’t thought of himself and Sarina as being in line for the checkpoint, when he tried to turn around, there were other Breen queuing up behind them.
From a walkway overhead, a Breen soldier pointed at Bashir and barked, “Keep moving forward!”
Sarina grabbed Bashir’s arm and pulled him with her toward the checkpoint, a narrow passage flanked by Breen guards. “Now we find out how convincing our identichips are.”
Their turn at the checkpoint was over in a moment. One guard passed a scanning device in front of Bashir and Sarina, and the other studied the readout on a small display. The forged identity profiles appeared on the second guard’s screen, and he gave them a cursory once-over before waving Sarina and Bashir through the scanning station to a downward-sloped moving walkway that carried them away in a blur.
Sarina looked back. “All right. We made it through.”
“Great,” Bashir said, “but where are we going?”
Seconds later, he had an answer. The walkway leveled out and disgorged its passengers onto a broad thoroughfare—high above a chasm within which had been constructed a massive underground city. The subterranean metropolis was crisscrossed with bridges, walkways, cables, lights, and pipes, and it bustled with throngs of pedestrians and tiny antigrav-propelled ’bots that zipped to and fro. The air was heavy with food scents, hazy with smoke, buzzing with vocoder noise, and alive with music. Looking up, Bashir saw a dome of rough-hewn stone festooned with hanging lights, antennas, cabling, and loudspeakers that filled the air with booming announcements in a stentorian voice of authority.
“Well,” he said, “now we know why Breen colonies always look so sparse. They’re ninety-nine percent underground.”
Every twist and turn Bashir and Sarina explored led them deeper into the Breen’s hidden metropolis, whose lower levels were packed with civilians, all garbed in simple garments of neutral colors—grays and beiges, with an occasional hint of dark brown—and snout-shaped masks that left Bashir wondering how the Breen were able to tell one another apart.
Most surprising to him, however, was the sultry climate of the city’s deepest environs. Heat surged up from the pitch-black abyss that yawned in the center of the city, and the streets were hot and teeming with activity, thick with smoky haze and savory aromas. Atonal music wafted from distant chambers and mixed with the squawking of vocoders. A gaggle of short humanoids whose slightness of frame led Bashir to speculate they might be adolescents flowed around him and Sarina. As they passed, Bashir noted that several of them were carrying swaddled infants in pouches slung across their chests or balanced on their hips. He looked more closely at one of the infants, hoping to glimpse an unmasked Breen face, but saw only a smaller, less detailed version of the Breen mask staring back at him.
Sarina beckoned Bashir with a sideways nod toward a distant intersection. He followed her.
Though he was grateful for the information provided by his mask’s HUD, its constant intrusions into his field of vision had begun to annoy him. Many of its notes seemed superfluous to him, so he used his suit’s internal voice-command module to turn off certain notifications and override the translation of selected symbols. Only after he had done so did he realize why he had needed to—he was starting to assimilate rudimentary elements of the Breen language.
More elusive than the Breen’s language were the tiny nonverbal cues that seemed to serve as the basis for communication between individuals. Because of their ubiquitous use of masks, the Breen could not take their cues from facial microexpressions, as did so many humanoid species throughout local space. Instead, they appeared to have incorporated a subtle and complex form of sign language to augment their verbal interactions.
Observing exchanges of currency and goods, Bashir noted that body language also seemed to play a role in Breen discourse. Distance, angle, and even the specific posture of the head, torso, limbs, and extremities could convey meanings, telegraph emotional states, or be used to jockey for social dominance. It troubled Bashir to think that a nod at the wrong time or a nervous fidget could easily lead to him and Sarina being exposed and killed.
They neared a busy intersection beside a broad walkway that bridged the chasm. In the center of the crossroads stood a cluster of tall, four-sided obelisks made of black granite. The faces of each obelisk sported a computer interface. Sarina led Bashir through the crowd to the nearest open computer panel.
“It’s a public-information kiosk,” she said, continuing to use their private comm channel. Breen symbols raced across the screen from right to left. “It’s moving too quickly for my HUD to translate.”
Bashir huddled in close against her so that he could also see the screen. The flood of data crossing the display was a green blur. “What are you looking for?”
“Lodging. We need to get off the street and set up a base.”
She poked at the computer while Bashir watched and resisted the urge to shake his head. “Incredible. Here we are, hoping to infiltrate a Breen military base, and we don’t even know how to book a hotel room.”
Exasperation gave an edge to Sarina’s voice. “Think you can do better, Julian? Feel like taking over and showing me how it’s done?”
“Is that a challenge? Are you saying you don’t think I’m up to the task?”
“Do you answer every question with another question?”
“Move over.” Bashir shouldered Sarina half a step left so he could access the touchscreen. He spent several embarrassing seconds trying and failing to keep up with and control the torrent of alien symbols speeding past. Finally, even though Bashir couldn’t see Sarina’s face, the weight of her stare became too much for him to take and he stepped aside. “Okay, I give up.”
Leading him away from the kiosk, she said, “It might be a few more days before the heuristic learning circuits in our HUDs can keep up with that thing.”
“What do we do for shelter until then?” He looked up at the walls of the city, which were honeycombed with dwellings aglow with amber light. “Knock on random doors and hope for the kindness of alien strangers?”
“Hardly. Maintaining a city this size underground requires infrastructure for power and ventilation. If we can find a way inside some of it, we can buy ourselves some time.” She leaned against the bridge’s railing and looked out and down. “There, between levels. See those fans? I bet those are part of an air-filtering system. I bet we’ll find maintenance hatches down some of those empty alleys.”
Nodding at a passing drone that flew past and dived into the darkness, Bashir asked, “What if those hatches are monitored? Or secured inside official buildings? I doubt a people as paranoid as the Breen would leave vital areas of their civil infrastructure accessible to the public.”
Sarina started walking. When Bashir c
aught up to her, she asked, “Would you say the Cardassians were paranoid in the years before the Dominion War?”
“To say the least,” Bashir said.
“But even they didn’t take extraordinary measures to secure their old water-supply and waste-removal infrastructure, did they?”
“That’s because they didn’t need them after the introduction of replicators and matter reclamators,” Bashir said. “Once they shut down the old plumbing, it was sealed off and forgotten. But the Breen’s air system is open and active.”
“But do you think a lot of Breen civilians are out to sabotage one of the key systems that keep them alive?”
“How would I know? I just got here.” He eyed the spinning blades of a giant fan that filled the mouth of a tunnel dozens of meters below the bridge. “If I were the Breen, I’d be more worried about defending that system from outside attack.”
Still walking at a brisk pace, Sarina replied, “Let’s assume you’re right. Maybe the air system isn’t the best place to hide. It’s not our only option.” She led him into a narrow passage that had been excavated from the bedrock.
Sidestepping in pursuit, Bashir asked, “What’s down here?”
Sarina pointed up. “Something connected to those cables.”
Bashir looked up and saw that several groups of wires converged into the sliver of an alleyway. When he and Sarina reached its dead end, she turned on her palm beacon and used its beam to trace a path of ladderlike grooves cut into the rear wall. At its apex was a deep alcove containing a bulky piece of machinery to which all the cables were linked. Beside the device was a metal door.
“Ladies first.” Bashir gestured at the ladder.
Sarina stepped aside. “Age before beauty.”
It was an easy climb, but the alcove at the top was barely large enough for them both to stand in at the same time. Bashir pinned his arms at his sides to make room for Sarina while she used some of her SI-provided tools to disable the door’s alarm and then pick its lock, which released with a hollow clack. To Bashir’s relief, the door swung inward and into a long, gently curving passageway lit by widely set dim panels on its rocky ceiling. Its walls were lined with cables, power lines, and small components. It stretched away for nearly a hundred meters, past several intersections, before vanishing beyond its curve.
Bashir moved past Sarina and stopped a few meters inside. She stepped in, shut the door behind her, and used her tools to relock it. Tucking the tiny device back into its pocket on her disguise, she said, “Don’t worry about the internal sensors. They’re tied to the alarms, which I deactivated.” She removed her helmet, and her sweat-soaked blond hair tumbled in a mess about her face as she sighed with relief and smiled. “Welcome to our new home away from home.”
11
The image of space looked empty and serene as warp-distorted starlight stretched away from the center of the Aventine’s main viewscreen, but Commander Samaritan Bowers remained wary. He was reviewing a steady stream of tactical updates from Lieutenant Kedair and sensor analyses from Lieutenant Commander Helkara, who both were nearing the end of their second full shift on bridge duty.
Fast-moving sensor contacts that had originated in the Koliba system were on intercept courses for the Aventine as it cruised along the edge of Breen territory. Bowers counted seven Breen ships, including two heavy attack cruisers. Their combined firepower would be more than enough to destroy the Aventine, despite the improvements made to its shields during the previous year’s Borg invasion.
Ideally, we’d outrun them, Bowers thought. Under normal circumstances, with slipstream drive, the Aventine could easily outpace the Breen ships. Unfortunately, the Aventine’s current course left it hemmed in on three sides by the Black Cluster, a region of collapsed protostars that was notorious for swallowing up starships that dared to venture too close to its brutal gravitational effects, and flanked by the approaching Breen battle group.
That left the Aventine with two ways to go: forward or backward.
Bowers eyed the tactical map beside the command chair, which showed Kedair’s report about the Breen fleet, and then glanced at the navigational chart on the other side of the center chair. That display highlighted Helkara’s enhanced analysis of the ship’s latest sensor sweeps, all of which suggested that the Breen ships were not the only threat in the sector but merely the most obvious one.
A young Vulcan ensign holding a tray bearing a mug of hot coffee stepped up from behind Bowers, stopped beside the command chair, and said, “Sir.”
“Thank you, Yeoman.” Bowers lifted the mug from the tray. The ensign nodded and stepped away. Bowers sipped his sweetened coffee and wondered what advice he might give to the captain that could persuade her to move the ship clear of what he perceived to be an increasingly dangerous area.
At the rate we’re going, they’ll have us surrounded by the time we reach Cetareth, he realized. Even if the Breen stay on their side of the border, it would take only a few Romulan warbirds to put us on ice for the rest of this op—and that’ll leave no one to extract Bashir and Douglas.
A voice filtered down from the ship’s internal comm and interrupted Bowers’s dark musings. “Dax to Commander Bowers.”
Sitting up straighter, Bowers replied, “Go ahead, Captain.”
“I want you to make a course correction.”
He faced the navigational chart. “Ready, sir.”
“Drop us out of warp, bring us hard about, and retrace our path.”
The order gave Bowers pause, and he exchanged perplexed glances with Kedair, Helkara, and beta shift flight control officer Ensign Erin Constantino. Though he was not in the habit of making his commanding officer repeat her orders, he decided that this directive needed to be verified. “Excuse me, Captain, but could you confirm that you wish us to double back?”
“That’s correct. And increase speed to warp nine. I want to see the Breen try to keep up, and I really want to see what those sensor ghosts on our aft quarter do when we start moving directly toward them.”
The audacity of Dax’s tactics made Bowers smile. “Aye, sir. Initiating course correction.” He nodded at Constantino, who began executing the order.
“One more thing,” Dax said. “I’ve sent Lieutenant Kandel to relieve you, so go get some rack time, and tell Kedair and Helkara to do the same. I think we’re in for a rough day tomorrow, and I want you all rested.”
“Acknowledged,” Bowers said, and then he raised his voice to declare, “Alpha shift personnel, to your racks. Captain’s orders.”
“See you in the morning,” the captain said. “Dax out.”
12
Hiding in the maintenance tunnels and crawlspaces of the Breen’s underground city had not been what Bashir would call an ideal situation, but it had served its purpose. He and Sarina had been able to shed their disguises for a few hours, clean themselves up a bit using personal hygiene kits hidden beneath the thigh guards of their lightweight polymer armor, and enjoy some unencumbered sleep.
After a few hours’ rest, Sarina roused Bashir. “Time to get back to work,” she said, handing him his helmet.
They ate a quick breakfast of Starfleet dry rations, donned their suits and masks, and set off to explore the city’s infrastructure. Along the way, Sarina paused to install a signal tap in the city’s information network. “Never know when this’ll come in handy,” she said as she spliced some cables into a small wireless transceiver. “If you need to patch in, it’s transmitting an encrypted signal to our helmets on channel nine forty-one.”
“Got it,” Bashir said, making a mental note.
The path out of the maintenance tunnels led them into what appeared to be the subbasement of an industrial facility. Mechanical noise and chemical fumes filled the air. “Look for an exit,” Sarina said.
Bashir pivoted slowly while straining to pierce the darkness. “There.” He pointed at a familiar ideogram stenciled on a wall beside an open staircase. “I’m fairly certain that’s the symbo
l for ‘exit.’” He took point and guided Sarina through the maze of oversized machines. To his great relief, the sublevel seemed to be unoccupied, and they took the steps two at a time in hurried bounds.
At the top, Sarina halted him with a tap on his shoulder. “Let me check the door for alarms. We’ve been lucky so far, but we can’t get sloppy.”
He stepped aside and let her pass. She scanned the door with a small sensor and then inspected its edges and frame with her gloved fingertips. “It’s clear.” She unlocked it and cracked it open to see what lay on the other side.
Street noise and golden light seeped in through the sliver-thin gap between the door and its jamb. Fleeting shadows hinted at brisk pedestrian traffic outside. Sarina listened, and at the first sign of a lull she pushed the door open just enough to slip through. “C’mon,” she said. Bashir darted out and looked around to see if they’d been observed. The few Breen civilians passing by did not seem to have noticed Bashir and Sarina’s suspect emergence from a door marked with a symbol that meant “restricted area.” Sarina closed and locked the door. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Purposeful strides and a minimum of conversation helped them blend back into the crowd of Breen pedestrians, which carried them away like a strong tide. They stayed close to each other, and Bashir let Sarina decide which paths to take at intersections. After they had walked for what felt like at least an hour, she stopped and ducked into a narrow alley beside a wide, brightly lit boulevard packed with retail merchants, food vendors, and what Bashir surmised were office complexes. Most of the stores were fronted by huge vid screens that displayed a steady torrent of product images and text messages accompanied by several competing streams of overamplified Breen machine-speak.