Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers

by James Swallow

  “You have something there, sir?” asked Myda.

  “Damned if I know,” he admitted. Something else was bothering him, along with the hundreds of other issues pressing into his thoughts: How had the Cardassians known that they would be at the port, at that hangar? He felt a cold sensation creep through his gut. Is that why they let me go? Because Dukat or one of the others is monitoring the precinct? That must be it…

  “Mace!” They both turned toward the sound of his name, and the lawman’s face clouded as he recognized a familiar figure scrambling over the duty officer’s desk. He was dragging a heavy pack with him.

  “Syjin? What are you doing back here?”

  The pilot came over, his usual breezy manner gone. “Never mind that,” he snapped. “I have to talk to you, right now.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Bajor’s falling apart all around us,” Myda retorted. “And this area is off-limits to civilians.”

  Darrah waved her away. “It’s okay, Myda.” He shot Syjin a look. “You said you were getting out. It’s a mistake coming back to Bajor. People are taking any ship they can find to get offworld.”

  “I didn’t land at the port,” the pilot explained, speaking rapidly. “My bird is still in low orbit. I beamed down.” He held up the pack. “You need to see this, Mace, and right now.” Syjin shot Myda a look. “In private, I’d say.”

  Darrah frowned and beckoned his friend toward his office. “In here, then.”

  Syjin closed the door and dropped the bag on his desk. “Take a look.”

  Inside was a battered cylindrical data module, the kind the Space Guard fitted as a redundant memory core aboard their ships. Darrah leaned in and read the identity plate fused to the dense metal. One word made his breath catch in his throat. “Clarion? That was the ship—”

  The pilot nodded. “The ship that Lonnic Tomo was aboard. One of the lost reprisal fleet.”

  The lawman ran his hands over the surface. It was undamaged. He started looking for output ports. “Where did you find this?”

  “The Ajir system, a clump of dead planets off the main trade lanes. Look, that’s not important. What is important is that this thing is still in one piece. Whatever happened to the Clarion and the rest of those ships, it’s in here.” He tapped it with a finger. “I tried to connect it up to my bird’s mainframe, but I couldn’t get into the logs. I need a more powerful machine and someone with the clearance to get access…” He looked at Darrah and trailed off.

  “And you figured a police officer would be just right?” Darrah studied the unit. The Starfleet woman’s words echoed again. You already know the answer. He thought about the attack, about Lonnic and the ships that had never come home. “The truth is in here,” he breathed. “Fire’s sake, Syjin. Do you understand what you’ve found?”

  He shook his head. “Not really, Mace. That’s why I brought it to you, because you’re smarter than me. You always know the right thing to do.”

  Darrah reached for a connector cable and then halted. “If the Cardassians are monitoring the precinct’s datastreams, they’ll know the moment I hook this up.”

  “What do they have to do with this?” Syjin asked.

  Darrah ignored the question and studied the device for a long moment; then he got to his feet and put it back in the pack. “Come on. We can’t do this here. We have to use an isolated system, one with no connection to the planetary data network.”

  “Where are we going to find something like that?”

  Darrah grabbed his coat and weapon. “I know where.”

  The image was blurred slightly by the motion of movement in the second it was captured, but light-intensification subroutines built into the viewscreen had cleaned up the sillhouette enough for any observer to be certain of what they were seeing. “A Janad-class tank,” said Nechayev. “All it was missing was a crew and the will to use it.”

  Across the Gettysburg’s briefing room, at the far end of the conference table, the young lieutenant with the serious expression gave a low gasp. “Oy. They’re loaded for bear.”

  The Vulcan woman to Nechayev’s right nodded. “An accurate estimation, Lieutenant Gold, if overly colloquial.” She glanced at Nechayev. “You are certain that the vehicles were ready for deployment?”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind, Commander. And let’s not forget, my report covers only one enclave location. There’s a dozen on Bajor, each potentially concealing similar weapons stores.” She paused and winced, rubbing her eyes.

  Captain Jameson, who had remained largely silent during her debriefing, leaned in. “Lieutenant, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” she lied. “Fine” was actually quite a long way from how she felt right now, and there had been a moment out there in the black aboard the Kaska when Nechayev had thought she would never feel anything again.

  Jekko’s courier, its systems finally overwhelmed by the enormous power drain placed on them by the vintage cloaking device, had finally given out. The cascade shutdown had wrecked everything, fusing the systems and terminating life support. Nechayev and Jones climbed into the decrepit emergency environmental suits in the ship’s locker and waited for the ice to start forming. Jones slipped into unconsciousness first, as the cold, hard stars wheeled around them. Nechayv tried to stay awake, clutching her phaser in numb fingers, but she followed the other woman into blackness as hypothermia reached in and took hold.

  The Gettysburg had found them soon after, as Commander T’Vel had told her, homing in on Nechayev’s encrypted recovery beacon. The Kaska was in the starship’s shuttlebay, a few decks below them, being picked over by the engineering crew. Nechayev felt a flicker of guilt; the little vessel had killed itself saving their lives, and it deserved a more noble fate.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to return to sickbay?” said Jameson. “We can resume this at a later time.”

  Sickbay. She’d woken up on the biobed gasping for air and panicking, dreaming of snakes. Jones was still down there, sleeping off her recovery. “No, sir,” she said firmly, shaking her head. “Captain, with all due respect, this can’t wait for a later time. We have to act now.”

  Jameson and T’Vel exchanged glances. As an operative for Starfleet Intelligence, Nechayev was used to the idea that there would be information that she was not privy to. The concept of “need to know” was integral to being a good operative. As such, she’d learned to recognize when her superiors were holding something back. Nechayev glanced around the room; as well as the captain and his executive officer, she was flanked by Gold and Gettysburg’s chief of security, an Andorian female named sh’Sena. She hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know them beyond the most cursory of conversations; in her experience, starship crews tended to be tight-knit groups who didn’t exactly resent the presence of an intelligence operative on temporary assignment to their vessel, but they didn’t welcome it either. Of them all, sh’Sena was the only one Nechayev had spent any time with, mostly during the mission preparations before she and Jones had been inserted on Draygo. The Andorian’s mood read wrongly to Nechayev’s trained eye. Something has happened. While we were undercover, something happened.

  She turned back to Jameson. “What’s changed, sir?”

  The captain folded his arms. “Tell me your mission objective, Lieutenant.”

  “Covert assessment of the political situation on Bajor.” She reeled it off automatically. “Primary mission goal: make contact with a local asset in the employ of Bajoran exile Keeve Falor, evaluate all available intelligence, and exfiltrate.” She sighed, ignoring for a moment that the planned silent departure from Bajor had mutated into a headlong race with Cardassian guns chasing them all the way.

  “And what was the purpose of that mission?”

  “We were sent in there to answer a question.” Her tone stiffened. “Is the Cardassian Union going to forcibly annex the planet Bajor?” She jerked her thumb at the still image of the tank. “Well, sir? You tell me.”

  “I�
�d say the answer is clear,” Jameson replied. “And the next question becomes, what are we going to do about it?”

  Nechayev read the reply in his eyes and she went cold. “Nothing.”

  The captain nodded. “That’s right. Starfleet wants us to stand back and maintain a safe distance. We’re to observe and conduct signals intelligence for the moment, but no more.”

  Nechayev blinked and leaned forward. “Sir, I’m not sure if you understand the gravity of the situation. I was down there, I felt the mood of the people. They’re on a knife edge.” She shook her head. “Captain, a man died so I could bring this information out safely! He gave up his life without hesitation because he thought we were going to help his world.” The agent tapped the tabletop. “We have a window of opportunity here. Bajor is one step away from governmental collapse, and the Cardassians are giving them a push! We can stop that, but we have to move on it right away!”

  “Without a direct mandate from the Federation Council, we’re not going back in,” Jameson said flatly.

  Nechayev was the veteran of a dozen clandestine missions. She was highly trained, one of the best field agents in the division. She understood that dispassion was an important factor in maintaining the clinical distance required to be a covert operative. And yet, as she sat and listened to the Gettysburg’s commander cut off the last hope for Bajor, something inside her snapped. “I can’t accept that,” she retorted. “Those people are in clear and present danger. We can’t just walk away!” The outburst surprised everyone, Nechayev included. It’s Gwen; all her wide-eyed naïveté has rubbed off on me.

  “But we will,” said T’Vel, “because we must.” The Vulcan glanced at Jameson, seeking permission, and he nodded. She continued. “Starfleet Intelligence has discovered that the Cardassian Union is operating a concealed listening post within Federation space, from a moon in the Delavi system. To use your term, Lieutenant Nechayev, that outpost represents a clear and present danger to the hundreds of Starfleet vessels and colonies that operate within its detection range.”

  “Command is drawing up an assault plan as we speak,” added sh’Sena. “Once in place, we’ll take the outpost and neutralize it.”

  “But in the meantime we have to keep our hands free of the Bajor Sector,” said Jameson. “The Cardassians know we’re sniffing around. If they think we’re coming into the area in force, they’ll go dark. You know how they work; the Delavi outpost will be abandoned and they’ll set up somewhere else, somewhere we don’t know about.”

  “Starfleet will lose the opportunity for the intelligence coup of the decade,” said the Andorian. “Delavi is the key-stone for the Union’s surveillance operations in the Federation.”

  Nechayev nodded slowly. “So we let Bajor get swamped by Cardassia so we don’t tip our hand, is that it?”

  “Bajor isn’t a part of the Federation,” noted Gold. “I don’t think anyone here believes it’s a good situation, but we have to fight our own battles. Nobody in the Bajoran government has asked for our help. As much as I hate to say it, this is a matter of internal alien politics.”

  “David’s right,” said Jameson. “Delavi is a threat to Federation stability, here and now. Bajor…” He sighed. “Bajor is a problem for another day. We’re spread too thin out here to do otherwise.”

  “Captain—” began Nechayev.

  Jameson shot her a look. “The matter is closed, Lieutenant. For better or worse, the Bajorans are on their own.”

  “This way,” said Darrah, leading Syjin down the ornate corridors of the Naghai Keep. “Don’t lag behind.”

  “I’m coming, don’t panic,” said the pilot. “I’m just admiring the sights, you know? People like me don’t usually get invited into the ancestral home of the Minister for Korto District.”

  They reached the heavy nyawood door to the great library and Darrah shouldered it open. “Just don’t steal anything.” He strode inside, and Syjin followed him in.

  The pilot tilted his head back to take in the multiple levels of the chamber. “Ooh. Look at that.” He clicked his teeth appreciatively. “All those books. I didn’t think there were that many in the world.”

  Darrah beckoned him toward a console set in a six-sided stone table in the center of the chamber. “Stop acting like a tourist and get over here. It’s not like you’re a big reader anyway.”

  Syjin walked over, his dusty boots tapping across the marble. “Well, if they have pictures…”

  “Be quiet!” Darrah growled, removing the memory core from the bag.

  “I still don’t understand why you brought us here,” Syjin frowned. “Seems like a lot of trouble to read some files.”

  Darrah worked the crystalline keyboard. “This is a stand-alone library computer. No connections to anything outside the walls of the keep, which means there’s no path of entry for any data-mining software or surveillance programs. Right now, this console is the equivalent of a locked room.” He drew a fistful of glowing optical cables from the bag and connected them to the battered piece of hardware. “Plug these into the interface socket there, behind the wooden edging.”

  Syjin flipped open the finely tooled panels and locked the connectors home. “Done.”

  Darrah placed his hands flat on the panel. “All right. Let’s take a look. See what we have.”

  “Take a look at what, Darrah?” Both men glanced up, startled. Two levels above their heads, in the racks of scrolls from the Second Republic era, Vedek Gar leaned over the handrail and watched them warily. The cleric moved to a wrought-iron spiral staircase and made his way down, talking as he descended. “What are you doing here? Haven’t you seen what’s going on out in the city?”

  Darrah had automatically drawn his pistol, but he didn’t holster it again straightaway. “I’ve seen,” he replied. “Believe me, I’ve seen it.”

  “Syjin?” Gar continued. “Is that you? Prophets, you haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Uh, Vedek,” managed the pilot. “Hello.”

  Gar exited at their level and approached. “You have a weapon there, Mace. Are you expecting trouble?”

  “I’m always expecting trouble,” he said cautiously. “Part of my job.”

  The priest glanced at the memory core. “So. I repeat my question. Take a look at what?” He reached for the device. “This?”

  Darrah interposed himself between Gar and the memory core. “I’m going to use the library computer. It won’t take long.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. “Do you want me to leave?” Gar asked. “Oh. It’s private, is it? Something you don’t want to share with an old friend?”

  Darrah’s tone cooled. “Didn’t you tell me you couldn’t afford to be that anymore, Vedek?” He put emphasis on the title. “You said you were too busy for that kind of thing.”

  Gar frowned. “I’m sorry if I offended you. That wasn’t my intention.” He reached out his hands and touched Darrah on one shoulder, and Syjin on the other. “Recent years have put a great distance between us, haven’t they? But on a day like today, we need to be close again.” He shook his head. “Bajor needs our strength.”

  “Mace, let’s just do this,” said Syjin. “We’re wasting time.”

  Darrah holstered his gun and activated the console. “All right.”

  A data pane appeared as the ornate machine linked to the data storage device, a holographic screen shimmering into being above the stone table. The cleric gasped as he read the information presented there. “The Clarion? This is from the warship Clarion?” He shot a look at Syjin. “You found this in space? Where?”

  “Ajir IX,” said the pilot. “There was wreckage all over the surface of a moon. It was pure accident that I happened to be there.” He grimaced. “Probably nothing left now, not after the Ferengi got to it.”

  “Ferengi?”

  He nodded. “A nasty little scumdrinker called Grek. But at least I got this away from him.”

  Gar smiled. “We have the Prophets to thank for guiding you, Syj
in. You’ve done their work by bringing this recording home.”

  Darrah worked the console, filtering through layers of stored information. “There’s some corruption, but it’s still readable. I think I can play back the feed from the Clarion’s bridge monitors…”

  The holographic sphere trembled and became a portal into events five years in the past. The display showed the command deck of the Space Guard warship, the crew moving on errands of duty. Beneath the main image, smaller data panels showed environmental information, sensor readings, power curves. Syjin leaned closer. “Systems all seem okay,” he noted. “When was this?”

  “I spooled back to a few minutes before the recording stops,” explained Darrah.

  Gar pointed at a figure who wasn’t sporting the same gray uniforms as the Clarion’s bridge crew. “That’s Lonnic Tomo.”

  Her voice issued out of a hidden speaker, laced with static, but still clearly the woman they knew. “We have nothing but circumstantial evidence that the Tzenkethi were even involved!”

  Darrah ignored the stab of emotion that came from seeing his friend alive and well once again. He steeled himself, knowing what would come next.

  They listened in silence to the voices of the dead. “Sensor sweep complete. I can confirm the presence of volatile stocks aboard the alien vessel, sir. Refined triceron, military grade.”

  “They found the Tzenkethi,” said the priest.

  Syjin waved a hand at Darrah. “This part we know. They located the marauder and engaged it. But what happened then?”

  Darrah moved the recording along in skips; they saw the engagement in fast-forward, the battle unfolding in blinks of motion. The destruction of the scouts, the fighting between the assault ships and the marauder.

  Syjin’s hand stabbed out. “There! Stop it there!” He pointed at a time index. “Play that.”

  Voices crackled through the halls of the library. “New contacts, bearing two-one-seven mark seven!”

  “More Tzenkethi?”

  “No. Cardassian. A pair of light cruisers. They’re closing…”