He saw the hostel up ahead and crossed the bridge over the river that would lead him to it. He had passed this way a few minutes earlier, and now he returned after doubling back on himself. The Romulan had done this so many times that it was rote to him, like muscle memory. Years of training had taught him how to determine if he was being followed, and his tradecraft was ingrained. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that he was free of surveillance.
The hostel’s upper floor was lit by the faint glow of a lantern, visible through smoked-glass windows. He saw a shadow moving in the room.
They would all be there now, waiting for him. He was the last to arrive, and that was fitting. He had earned the right to that small privilege, and no one could deny it. His service to Romulus and her people was a matter of record, with sealed files full of mission reports that would have earned him a chest full of medals if only they could have been spoken of openly.
He was not bitter about that; no, his rancor had a different source. He laid the blame on the outsiders, the aliens he had been forced to spy on for so many years. It sickened him a little to think of those times now. Under open cover, he had moved among beings who thought they were the equal of Romulan perfection, stood at their tables and eaten at their state dinners. He had laughed and smiled and chatted, all the time thinking of how much he despised them.
And then it had all fallen apart. On the eve of what would have been his greatest accomplishment, a conspiracy of fools had collapsed, thanks to the weakness of a mongrel cousin. His lip curled to think of her. A Vulcan. So superior to us, so disdainful. But in the end, frail and self-absorbed.
One day, he decided, he would seek out the Vulcan and have her killed. He entertained the fantasy of it as he crossed the bridge. He’d have it done quietly, make it look like an accident. But before she perished, the assassin would ensure she knew whose hand had wielded the blade. The name that had been struck from his identity would be said aloud once again, just to let her know.
As he approached the hostel, he metered his expression, pushing the thoughts of revenge away. Now was not the time to dwell on the past. This meeting was an important one, and the cell leaders waiting for him would have much to discuss. These informal gatherings on colony worlds like Devoras Prime served to keep their activities out of sight and mind of the senators on Romulus, all the better to ensure that the great work went on without the interference of politicians. He had played the role of one for a long time and he knew how shortsighted they could be.
Better that the agents of the Tal Shiar met like this, in quiet places where the fates of worlds and men could be discussed in secret. Let our enemies and the common folk stare up at the stately towers in the capital and believe we meet there.
Tonight they would speak of the fires started on worlds along the borders of their great enemies, of the weapons and support funneled to proxy soldiers, the plans for covert murders and the exacerbation of conflicts. The Star Empire is a most patient predator, he thought. She bleeds her foes white before the killing bite comes.
Of course, there were missteps along the way: the expenditure of time and effort on the Klingon border with the Kriosians had fallen to nothing, for example. Like the inbred nationalist rabble of the Q’unat clan, they had self-destructed before they could do any real damage—but he was convinced that Krios Prime could still be a poison dagger with which to pierce the hide of the Klingon beast. As he climbed the staircase, he considered how he would address that matter. We will try again. We will be the patient predator—
The door before him opened to a room filled with silence and the stink of murder. The six men he was there to meet, each a cell leader of a Tal Shiar operations unit, all lay dead. Some slumped in chairs, throats slit open, others on the wooden floor in spreading pools of emerald blood.
He spun back for the door, his hand vanishing into his tunic for the disruptor concealed there, and it was then he saw the shadow at the back of the room.
From it emerged a woman, her face hard like plates of welded metal. She seemed like a native, with the heavier brow of many such Devoran-born Romulans; but something about her rang a wrong note with him. As the light fell on her, he saw blood on her jacket, and in her hands there were twin knives with barbed cleft-blades. The weapons were of Klingon design.
“Jolan tru, Ambassador Nanclus,” she said.
The name. It belonged to a different part of his life, a different mission. That man had died along with the falsehood of his existence and he had been reborn with new purpose.
He tried to block her, but she moved too fast. The blades entered his torso, severing arteries in a puff of green vitae. He gasped, unable to scream.
“This is for my sister,” she said, lowering him to the floor, watching him die. “For Kol, of the House of Tus’tai, and all those who perished at Da’Kel.”
The room grew dark, and the pain rose to engulf him. When the woman spoke again, the last thing he heard was a curse to follow him into the afterlife.
“MaghwI’ chuH ghobe’ Qib,” said the Klingon.
Russian Hill
San Francisco, Earth
United Federation of Planets
Vallejo Street was busy with weekend foot traffic, so Elias wandered into the park to shake off the stiffness from his run and found a place where he could work through his cool-down regimen. As an attempt to break up the patterns of his day, he’d taken to starting his exercise at random locations throughout the city; so far, it was working. He liked the runs: they narrowed his focus to a simple, mechanical action. One foot in front of the other, eating up the kilometers across the sidewalk. Vaughn could lose himself there, and slip away.
It was hard to find that distance, that peace of mind, elsewhere. Back in his apartment, the boxes were still there, half packed. If anything, returning home from the Da’Kel mission had made him feel even less connected to the city. And then there had been the endless rounds of questions, the debriefs—both casual and hostile—from officers way above his pay grade.
It all blurred together. The only thing that really stood out was the funeral. That he recalled with full and complete clarity, a rainy day in upstate New York where they buried an empty coffin for Darius Miller and handed his aging mother a folded Federation flag. Hallstrom had been there, and they shared a few words; but he had not seen the commodore since, and slowly Vaughn began to wonder if he had somehow been forgotten. He was back in the same role he had occupied at the Office of Intelligence Evaluation, almost as if nothing had happened; aside from the beard he’d started to grow, the only difference was that Commander Egan had flatly refused to have him return to his unit. Egan had apparently filed formal charges of insubordination against Vaughn, but like everything else, that seemed to fade away. Elias was now on a different desk, in a different building. The last connection to his former life was seeing Tracey Dale across the quad. He had waved, but she had not responded. That bothered him more than anything else.
He frowned and took a drink from his water bottle. Here I go again. He hated this train of thought, because it only led to one place. Vaughn felt trapped, like a fly in amber, his future on hold. Are they going to drum me out for what I did? Give me a medal? Shuttle me off to some makeweight posting at the ass-end of the galaxy? It was the silence from command that made it worse.
Vaughn remembered Sulu shaking his hand in the Excelsior’s transporter room, Valeris standing up on the pads waiting for him. “You did what you thought was right,” the captain had said. “That’s what it means to be an officer. You were there. No one else. Don’t ever let them second-guess you.”
When he materialized at Starfleet Command, Valeris wasn’t with him. Taken to another site for debriefing, they had said. He hadn’t seen her since that day.
“Excuse me?” In mid-stretch, he turned at the sound of a female voice. An attractive young woman with dusky skin and dark hair was smiling back at him. She had the deep, expressive eyes of a Betazoid.
Eli
as was returning the smile even before he was aware of it. “Yes?”
“Lieutenant Vaughn, right?” She came closer. “I thought I recognized you. I’d know a Starfleet haircut anywhere.”
“There’s a lot of them in this city,” he allowed, holding the smile. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Not exactly,” she replied. “I’m Malla Tancreda. I was on Jaros II . . .” she trailed off. “Some months ago.”
Elias’s defenses went up. He had never felt entirely comfortable around telepaths, and there was something about the disarming, easy grin on the doctor’s face that unsettled him.
Tancreda must have sensed it. Her smile faded away. “I hoped I might run into you,” she went on.
“Yes,” Vaughn said carefully, “what are the odds?” He took another sip of water and studied her. “Look, Doctor. As nice to meet you as it is, if you’re looking to talk to someone about our . . . mutual friend, I’m not that person.”
“Our mutual friend,” she repeated, weighing the words. “She’s led a charmed life.”
Vaughn thought of Valeris’s face, and the hurt he glimpsed buried beneath it. “Not really.” He frowned. Rookie mistake. You’re letting her draw you out. “I should go.” He clipped the water bottle to his belt and stepped away.
“Do you know where Valeris is now?”
“Who?” he said, and kept walking.
Tancreda gave a soft chuckle. “Nice try. A non-telepath might have believed you.” She trailed after him. “Elias, don’t you want to know? Aren’t you curious about what’s going to happen next? To her? To you?”
Those last two words brought him up short. He turned back to give her his full attention. “Who do you work for?”
“Starfleet Medical. The telepsychotherapy department.”
“A mind-reading shrink. You must be great at your job.”
“I like to think so,” she demurred. “And I hear you are good at yours. A lot of people believe you have great potential.”
“Always nice to hear.” He folded his arms and let his instincts read the moment. Tancreda was sounding him out for something—but what, and why? He knew Starfleet Intelligence and this wasn’t the way they worked with junior lieutenants. People like Vaughn got hauled up into the offices of men with rows of braid on their sleeves and told what to do, no questions asked. They did not get approached on their day off by pretty telepaths with a line in oblique conversation. He began to wonder what this woman’s connection to Valeris’s prison term could mean. Did Hallstrom or Spock know? “What do you want from me, Doctor?”
“The direct approach,” she said with a nod. “That’s what I expected. Truth is, Elias, I came here to offer you something. A job.”
He stiffened. “I already have a career, thanks. I’ve got a desk and everything.”
Her smile became brittle. “I’m not the enemy. Far from it. The people I represent are patriots, like you. Men and women who believe in the United Federation of Planets. People who want to get things done.”
Ice flooded his gut. Section 31. He’d heard the name—no one could work in Starfleet Intelligence and not have—but it was a ghost story for the new recruits, an urban myth inside the espionage community. A secret contingent within Starfleet and without, working to their own agenda, beyond oversight.
Or perhaps this was something else. A test, maybe, to see which way he would jump.
“We need resourceful people like you, Elias. You could accomplish great things.”
He had to admit, there was an iota of him that was tempted—but that moment passed quickly and he shook his head. “Thanks but no, thanks, Doctor. I’m not interested.”
She frowned slightly. “I’m leaving Earth in less than an hour. I’ve been authorized to make this offer.” Tancreda inclined her head toward the park entrance. “I walk away, the opportunity walks with me.”
Vaughn eyed her. “I’m good at my job, remember? I think I could find you again.”
The Betazoid chuckled again. “You really won’t.” She sighed. “Last chance. Unless of course you like the idea of flying an analysis desk in the bowels of the jigsaw department for the next thirty years?”
“Why now?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Why come to recruit me now, months after the fact? If you wanted me on board, why not ask me the day I got back?” A smile came to his lips, and he saw her hesitation at the reaction. “Do you know what I think? I think you’re asking me today because you won’t be able to tomorrow. I think tomorrow Commodore Hallstrom is going to be calling me into his office . . . and, one way or another, I’ll know where I’m headed.” He nodded. “And I think you know that too.”
For a moment a flutter of irritation crossed Tancreda’s face—but then it was gone, and the smile was back. “You are a sharp one, Lieutenant J.G. Elias Vaughn. And I’ll be honest with you, I do believe you’ve got a great career ahead of you, as long as you keep a rein on that reckless streak of yours.” She reached for a thick bracelet around her wrist and touched a control; he heard a soft answering beep. “Just be sure that we’ll be watching you.” A glitter of light hazed the air around Tancreda and she vanished into a transporter beam.
Vaughn stared at the blank spot on the path where the woman had been standing and rubbed the stubble on his chin, turning over her words in his mind.
After a long moment, he turned his back on it and began the long jog back toward the air tram halt for the Starfleet Command grounds.
Sekir Settlement
Sigma Draconis V
United Federation of Planets
The starport lay on the edge of the desert expanse, looking out over the great rust-red erg toward the massive mountain range to the west. Mirage-heat wavered across the burning sands, blurring sight of the outlying homesteads that trailed out from the settlement like seedlings thrown from a cir-cen plant.
Many of the colonists who came from the homeworld remarked that this sector of the fifth planet was the one that most resembled the landscapes of Vulcan, and so it was that the majority of new arrivals made their new homes here. Sigma Draconis V was as Vulcan had been long ago, untouched by sentient hands and without the trials of the great tribal wars that had scarred Vulcan prehistory. Other species from Federation member worlds had also come to call the colony home, but they were a minority. It took a hardy being to adapt to such an environment, and those who did not hail from the desert found it difficult to make a life here.
The storms were the greatest threat, churning columns of sand whipped into corrosive hurricanes that could strip flesh from an unprotected body or ablate stone into fragments. It made ground travel and the fabrication of highways virtually impossible, and transporters were regularly disrupted by atmospheric ionization effects. Inside the city, behind the massive pergolas and windbreaks, underground maglevs carried the people and their cargoes, but beyond the limits of the main settlement the only contact could be by flyer.
On Sigma Draconis V, pilots were as valued as educators, healers, and ecologists, and the arrival of a new settler with that skill set was always met with approval.
V’Shel had been an administrator at Sekir Settlement for fifty-two-point-six rotations, and he had developed the ability to evaluate and parse the skill sets of each new colonial intake with speed and accuracy. The next interview would be the last of the day shift, and he deemed it would be a cursory matter. The applicant was already preapproved by the Federation’s Office of Colonial Affairs and the Vulcan Citizen’s Authority, and her résumé listed numerous talents that would be of value both in Sekir and the frontier townships.
The woman entered the reception room. V’Shel offered her the traditional Vulcan salute, and she was slow to return it. He had seen similar behavior in colonists who had spent long periods out of contact with fellow Vulcans, but in the new arrival it seemed unusual. He made a note of it, and she raised an eyebrow as he did so.
“Welcome to Sigma Draconis V,” he began. “I
am Administrator V’Shel. I am here to complete your final assignment.”
She gave a shallow nod. “I am . . . T’Leris.” The woman seemed to hesitate over her name, as if she were uncomfortable saying it aloud. She reached up and brushed a loose thread of hair back over her head.
Unlike many Vulcanoids, her hair was a light blond tone, and it framed her face in a manner that some might have considered aesthetically pleasing; V’Shel found it difficult to frame such concerns, however, and disregarded the thought. Still, he was drawn to study the scar on her right cheek, bisecting the rise of her cheekbone. It seemed peculiar; such an obvious blemish could easily have been removed with the application of a medical protoplaser. He decided to question her on that very issue.
“The scar is the result of . . . an accident,” she said, haltingly at first. “I elected to keep it as a personal reminder of that event.”
“Are your memories not vivid enough?” said V’Shel.
“No,” T’Leris replied, and her tone indicated that she did not intend to speak further on the matter.
V’Shel moved on, checking that the woman had understood and assimilated the information from the orientation package and her colonial assignment documents. Her residence had already been listed—a small single-bedroom apartment on the shaded side of the city—but he found it curious that nothing more than a single bag of clothing had been shipped with her. She had no furniture, no items of luggage beyond that which she carried on her shoulder.
He picked up her citizen’s identity card and handed it to her, cocking his head. “Your pilot’s license is encoded on this card,” he explained. “You have been logged into the municipal tasking schedule to begin work tomorrow morning. A run out to the farmlands in the salt sinks, I believe.”
T’Leris nodded. “I am glad to be of service.” Her tone remained flat and distracted.
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