by David Mack
Eberleg looked at Cherbegrod and Haripog. “Go where now?”
Cherbegrod pointed toward a large fusion reactor control panel at the end of the center aisle. “There.” He walked toward it, and his men followed him. It was a long walk. When they reached the big machine, Cherbegrod poked at its controls. A few lights blinked on the panel, then went out again. He looked at Eberleg and pointed at the console. “You fix? Make it work?”
“Will try,” Eberleg said. “Strange markings.”
As the engineer pulled apart the front of the reactor controls, Cherbegrod saw Haripog stare in wonder at the great towers of weapons. The first officer pointed at some of the parked load-lifters. “No seats.” Then he pointed up at the giant robot arms. “No hand controls.” He faced Cherbegrod. “Warehouse makes itself go. That is good.”
“Yes. Less work for us.” He pointed toward a wide, open passage at the end of the room. “This way.”
They walked together into the next area of the space station, which was separated from the warehouse by a thick wall. On the other side was a factory. It was a maze of snaking conveyer belts, robot arms of all sizes, and sleek machines—all lying still. Weapons of war stood at attention on the conveyer belt. The ones closer to the warehouse looked almost finished. The farther back one looked along the production line, the more skeletal the warheads became.
Haripog nodded. “No workstations. No workers. Factory runs itself.”
“And now factory is ours.” Cherbegrod grinned as he imagined how rich they all would be when they started selling these deadly toys to the highest bidders. “Go tell Eberleg to make power. Then we make factory go—and no one laughs at Pakleds ever again.”
Three
* * *
It was the most galling part of Dalit Sarai’s weekly routine, and always the low point of any day on which it fell: her mandatory check-in with her handler. She had never resented the protocol before being posted to the Titan as its executive officer. When she had served as a field operative for Starfleet Intelligence, check-ins had served a number of vital functions, not the least of which was receiving updates about emerging threats and changing situations. Now the flow of information during her check-ins was strictly one way—from her to the person holding her metaphorical leash. And that was a formula for resentment.
Sarai confirmed that the door to her quarters was locked. She couldn’t risk being interrupted for the next couple of minutes. With her privacy assured, she retrieved two items from the hiding place she’d devised behind the maintenance panel of her refresher nook. The first device was small and oval, similar in shape to a combadge of an earlier era, minus the familiar Starfleet delta. Seen by an untrained eye it could be mistaken for a nondescript bronze brooch. The second item was a plain metallic wand with a simplified display built into its side.
Years of training in espionage tradecraft compelled Sarai to conduct a sweep of her quarters with the wand. The compact scanner detected no hidden listening devices. She turned it off, put it away, and then tapped a well-practiced sequence on the bronze oval. The palm-sized secure comm vibrated momentarily in her hand. That signal meant the gadget was interfacing with the Titan’s secure computer network, spoofing the credentials of an ordinary padd or tricorder. In a matter of seconds it disabled the automated listening circuits inside her quarters and established an encrypted connection to the starship’s subspace transceiver array.
It vibrated twice in quick succession; its secret channel was open and standing by. Sarai tapped a different sequence on the device, to route its encrypted channel to the computer screen on her desk. “Active. Ready.”
A woman’s gray-haired, aquiline visage appeared on-screen: Sarai’s spymaster, Admiral Marta Batanides, director of Starfleet Intelligence. “Report.”
“Admiral Riker continues to overextend the resources of our escort ships.”
“Specifics, please.”
“Since last week, Admiral Riker has dispatched the Canterbury, Ajax, and Wasp on headings that, in my opinion, spread them too far apart to provide meaningful tactical support to one another, or to the Titan, in the event of a crisis.”
Batanides considered that. “What about Captain Vale? Did she note this in her log?”
“Negative. I voiced my concerns to her in private, but she dismissed them on the grounds that it’s not my place to second-guess the admiral in matters of frontier fleet operations.”
“For once, I agree with the captain. But your objections are well taken, Commander. . . . Do you have anything of note to report concerning Captain Vale?”
Sarai was reluctant to share her observations about her commanding officer, but she knew Batanides did not subscribe to the adage no news is good news. “Over the last seven days, she has on two occasions exhibited a questionable willingness to let Riker second-guess her orders. Neither incident had any significant effect on mission outcomes.”
“The effect on crew morale is of greater concern.” Batanides softened her expression. “You’ve been aboard the Titan for eight months. How are you fitting in?”
“The captain’s trust in me remains guarded, and I suspect the admiral still harbors some resentment at my compulsory presence. As for the rest of the crew—” She wondered whether she should confide that some of them still referred to her as the Ice Queen, because of her aloof behavior, then she thought better of it. Instead she lied. “They recognize my authority.”
“Even the chief engineer? Ra-Havreii? He has a reputation as a maverick.”
The mention of Ra-Havreii rankled Sarai. “Once I made him understand that I feel no obligation as a fellow Efrosian to assuage his sexual frustrations, our working relationship improved markedly.” She chose to omit mentioning the fact she had slapped him. Twice.
“And that brings us to Troi. I remain concerned about her serving alongside Riker. Has her presence compromised the effectiveness of Riker or Vale?”
Sarai was tempted to paint a figurative target on Troi, for no better reason than the half-Betazoid diplomatic officer’s empathic skills made her nervous, but Sarai’s sense of honor prevailed. “I’ve seen no evidence of that.”
“Then look harder.”
The callousness and cynicism of Batanides’s order upset Sarai, but she was in no position to complain. Two years earlier, she had risked going over the admiral’s head to share vital intel with President Pro Tem Ishan Anjar during the Bashir-Andor crisis—a political gamble that had backfired on Sarai when Anjar’s criminal past came to light. Disgrace had fallen on him and everyone associated with his scandalized run for the Federation presidency, including Sarai. She knew that had she not been recruited by Batanides to serve as her mole aboard the Titan, she would likely still be languishing in a do-nothing job in a munitions depot on Luna.
But that didn’t mean she was willing to fabricate offenses to satisfy the admiral’s obsessive vendetta against Admiral Riker and the senior officers of the Titan.
“If I observe anything suspect in the course of my duties, I will report it as ordered.” She took secret pleasure in seeing Batanides bristle at her passive-aggressive defiance. Eager to escape the awkward conversation, Sarai added, “My shift on the bridge begins in ten minutes. So if there’s nothing else?”
“Make your next report in five days.” The admiral closed the secure channel.
Sarai keyed in the deactivation sequence for her secure comm, then tucked it back into its hiding place beside the scanning wand and closed the panel. She checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror; her dark hair was secure in its regulation ponytail, and her upswept eyebrows still looked elegant and well-shaped. A deep breath, then she exhaled the tension of her talk with Batanides and exorcised all traces of emotion from her angular features.
Safe once more behind her mask of detachment, she left her quarters to start another day as SI’s unofficial asset aboard the Starship Titan.
There was no greater gift, in Ranul Keru’s opinion, than waking to face a new day.
>
His alarm—a gentle serenade of birdsong—sounded at 0615. Refreshed after a perfect night’s sleep, Keru opened his eyes to see his beau, Bowan Radwoski, looking back at him from the other side of the bed, squinting with groggy eyes.
“Morning,” Keru said.
Bowan smiled. “Hey.”
There wasn’t anything to talk about at that hour. It just felt good to Keru to know Bowan was there, sharing the same space and moment.
Keru rolled out of bed and plodded into the main room of their shared quarters—a recent change in their living arrangements that had been approved by the captain and effected with cheerful efficiency by the ship’s quartermaster. After a few minutes of stretching and breathing to prime his body, Keru eased into his scheduled fitness routine for the morning. It was a Thursday according to the ship’s chronometer, so his regimen today was yoga. Each day of the week had its own exercise plan. The day before it had been a brisk jog on a holodeck simulation of the lost beaches of Risa; the next day it would be aikido forms.
Somewhere between his salute to the sun and his warrior pose, Keru felt his tendons relax. Trickles of sweat rolled off his chest, teased his throat, and disappeared into his beard while he held a one-handed tree pose. He had only mastered the single-handstand after years of practice, and he still found it hard to hold steady. It was almost a relief when it came time for him to shift himself into the Sayanasana scorpion-pose variation, in which he balanced his inverted form on his elbows with his lower legs folded and his feet pointed toward his head.
Feeling brave, he attempted the wounded peacock pose—only to collapse in a heap. One of these days I’ll get the hang of that. He rolled into a corpse pose to end his routine and quiet his mind. It looked like the simplest of actions—lie on one’s back, don’t move, and be silent. The real challenge of it, however, was with one’s own unquiet mind. Today, at last, Keru let his mind vanish into the tides of his breathing. He was at peace in the now.
Soft footfalls across the carpeted deck brought him out of his meditation. Bowan stepped over him and asked on his way to the replicator, “Ready for breakfast?”
“Absolutely. But it has to be quick. I still need to shower before my shift.”
“Quick is good. Healthful is better.” He activated the replicator. “Egg white omelet with Swiss cheese, scallions, and broccoli. Pumpernickel bagel, toasted and buttered. Irish breakfast tea, hot.” As his meal materialized with a flash of color and a wash of semimusical sound inside the replicator nook, he asked Keru, “For you?”
“Two Ktarian eggs, poached, on steamed Vulcan seaweed. Half a Terran pink grapefruit. Raktajino, unsweetened. And, because I can’t be good all the time, a Zibalian puff tart.”
Bowan removed the tray containing his order from the nook, then repeated Keru’s order to the replicator. While he carried his food to the dining table, Keru toweled the perspiration from his face and arms. They ate breakfast sitting across from each other, chatting between bites as Bowan perused the morning’s news feeds on his padd. After they had finished eating, Keru glanced at the chrono and sprang from his chair. “I’m late!”
He dashed through their bedroom and into the sonic shower. Even though he disliked rushing through a shower, he hated being even a minute late for a duty shift on the bridge. In under ninety seconds he had cleansed himself. He dressed in a panic, then froze as he realized he was missing—
“My combadge!” He spun in one direction, then the other. “Have you seen my—?”
Bowan stood in the bedroom doorway, holding up Keru’s combadge between two fingers. “You left it in the living room. Again.”
Keru plucked the combadge from his lover’s hand and kissed him as he darted past him. “You’re a lifesaver, Bo!” Sprinting toward the door to the corridor, he called over his shoulder, “See you tonight!” Then he was in the corridor and running for the nearest turbolift.
Everyone he passed on his way to the lift smiled at him. He wondered if they knew something he didn’t. Then he caught his reflection in passing on a companel, and he realized they were all smiling because he was, from ear to ear, like a big dope.
Luck was on his side this morning. The turbolift doors were open when he arrived, and he slipped inside just before they closed. He nodded at Lieutenant Karen McCreedy from engineering. “Morning.” Then, to the computer, he said, “Bridge.” The lift car accelerated upward with barely any perceptible sense of movement.
As a senior officer bound for the bridge, his request superseded whatever instructions McCreedy had given the computer. It was a routine fact of life aboard Starfleet vessels, but on this occasion he felt compelled to acknowledge it with a sheepish look at the lieutenant and a humble, “Sorry.”
A single shake of her head. “No worries, sir.”
The doors parted with a swish, and Keru stepped onto the bridge of the Titan. He reached the security and tactical console, which had been manned on the overnight shift by Commander Tuvok. The Vulcan acknowledged Keru’s arrival with a polite nod. “All decks report secure. Ship’s status normal. No hostile contacts within sensor range.”
“Acknowledged. I relieve you, Commander.”
“I stand relieved.” Tuvok took a step backward and relinquished the console to Keru’s supervision precisely one minute before the scheduled start of alpha shift. As usual, Tuvok did not linger. He proceeded directly to the turbolift, which opened ahead of him to disgorge several passengers, including Commander Sarai, flight controller Lieutenant Commander Aili Lavena, and recently promoted bridge engineering officer Lieutenant Torvig Bu-Kar-Nguv.
Torvig gamboled to his post, which was at an aft console close to Keru’s. The young Choblik, who resembled a cross between a flightless bird and a two-legged forest herbivore with a prehensile tail that ended in a set of agile robotic fingers, and whose body had been accessorized with cybernetic enhancements including two bionic arms, settled in at his post.
A few minutes later, Keru noticed on the edge of his vision that Torvig was casting a curious look his way. He met the engineer’s stare. “What’s up, Tor?”
“I was going to ask you the same question, Ranul.”
“Why?”
“You were humming.”
That caught the Trill security chief by surprise. “I was what?”
“Humming. Quite audibly.” He turned apologetic. “I did not mean for you to stop. It seemed quite a happy melody.”
A quick look around confirmed for Keru that other officers nearby, including Ensign Peya Fell, the new alpha-shift science division liaison, were eyeing him with curiosity. Fell cracked an amused smile before averting her gaze, leading Keru to wonder what the young Deltan woman must think of him.
Before he could feel embarrassed by his subconscious slip, Torvig asked him, “Are you really feeling that ebullient this morning? Or are you perhaps overcompensating?” He gave his species’ equivalent gesture to a shrug. “I sometimes find it hard to read humanoids’ emotions.”
Keru stood tall, smiled, and let himself enjoy his chipper mood.
“What can I say, Tor? Life is good.”
“Life sucks.” Doctor Xin Ra-Havreii prowled past a line of nervous engineers who stood at consoles in the center of the main engineering deck. “And your sloppy work is the reason why.” He pointed at one screen after another as he passed, doling out criticism on the move. “Meldok, your intermix ratio is off by point zero-two. . . . Crandall, distortion feedback on the starboard warp coil should never exceed point zero-three millicochranes, that reads point zero-five. . . . Damn it, Rossini, I don’t want to see impurities in the flow from the Bussard collectors at more than point zero-five parts per million. . . . Tabyr, purge the EPS conduits until—”
Rossini interjected, “The specs for the Bussard collectors say the system can filter out impurities at concentrations of up to point two-five PPM.”
Ra-Havreii turned back toward Ensign Paolo Rossini. Planted himself in front of the wiry young human. And glared. “I�
�m sorry, Ensign. I could have sworn that I just heard a junior engineering officer quote specs at me. As if I weren’t the one who wrote the specs for this ship. Did I suffer an auditory hallucination, Ensign?”
Rossini snapped to attention at his post. “No, sir.”
“So you did quote specs at me.” Ra-Havreii leaned close enough that his dramatic, swooping eyebrows teased Rossini’s face while he continued his reprimand. “You’re still younger than some of my scars, Ensign, so let me tell you a little secret. Starship designers compile lots of recommended specs for their creations. Most of them are just educated guesswork, based on simulations and short-range test flights. No one really knows how a given system will work until long after it’s deployed. And each starship is different. Within a few years of service and a couple of refits, each ship develops its own idiosyncrasies. A good engineer learns to respect those quirks. Untrained engineers”—he lowered his voice to a menacing growl—“quote specs from a manual. Do I make myself clear, mister?”
“Aye, sir.”
Ra-Havreii pointed at Rossini’s console. “Back to work.”
He continued down the line. No one else backtalked him—until he reached the last duty station, the master status display. During most shifts he preferred to watch this post himself. However, since the Titan’s last refit—which had been made necessary by the beating the ship took in its battle against the Solanae at the start of the year—two veteran engineering officers had been transferred to his department by order of someone at Starfleet Command. Lieutenant Commander Aluno, a soft-spoken Catullan woman, had volunteered for the overnight shift; as a result, Ra-Havreii had barely seen her since she came aboard.
If only he could say the same about Lieutenant Commander Szevich Dalkaya. Young, smug, and maddeningly good at his job, the Zibalian was everything Ra-Havreii didn’t want in a subordinate. Making matters worse, Dalkaya had the proverbial “lean and hungry look,” and an air of arrogant superiority that made Ra-Havreii want to slap the tattoos off the man’s face.