Garan looked at Bacco for a moment, then shook her head and turned away again. She walked to the balcony railing, and, as Bacco had earlier, she placed her hands on it and gazed outward.
Bacco waited. She felt that she dared not say anything more, that she dared not move, for fear of interrupting Garan’s train of thought. Bacco deemed it a positive sign that she had not been summarily escorted from the castellan’s home.
At last, over her shoulder, Garan said, “I will consider your proposal, President Bacco.”
Bacco inhaled deeply before voicing her next thought. “I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Castellan,” she said.
Garan spun around as though Bacco had commenced a physical attack on her.
“The time for action on this alliance is now,” Bacco insisted.
“I understand that is your opinion,” Garan said. “It is not necessarily mine.”
“Then make it yours,” Bacco said icily. She sat back down in her chair, grabbed her cup, and took a drink of ravat. After placing the cup back on the table, she met Garan’s gaze and said, “I’m not leaving Cardassia without an agreement.”
For the first time, the castellan smiled. “Then you may be in for a long stay with us,” she said. “Even if the Cardassian Union is to accede to your wishes, it will take time. There are many details to consider, and our nation is most assuredly no longer run by the military or the Obsidian Order.”
“With respect, Castellan, you already know the details of an alliance with the Federation and Klingon Empire,” Bacco said. “How many times have our officials met with yours to discuss those issues? How many communications on the subject have you and I personally exchanged? How many times have we stood in the same room and discussed it?”
As she had at the beginning of their meeting, Bacco waited for Garan to come to her. It required two full minutes of silence, but then the castellan walked back over to the table, her heels clicking on the tiled balcony. “You are … indefatigable, Madam President.”
“I am tired, Castellan Garan,” Bacco said. “And more than a bit concerned about what might happen if we do not come together at this time for the purpose of protecting us all.”
Garan sighed, then leaned forward and took hold of her cup. She upended it into her mouth, then offered a knowing smile. “I think I need something stronger than fruit juice,” she said.
Bacco smiled back. “I think we both do.”
12
Although they barely contrasted with their surroundings, the spartan concrete walls still appeared out of place where they climbed upward from the shifting snows. Having walked some distance from the redoubt just so that he could view its completed form, Trok saw that drifts had already begun to fill the trail he’d left. He peered around in all directions, and for as far as he could see, the icy tundra stretched to the horizon. Wintry gales drove the snow in thick panes across the boreal landscape. Visibility fluctuated, clear in one direction and impenetrable in another, but then changing in the next moment.
Trok heard a rush of random sound as particles of ice and snow pelted his armor, though they did not penetrate its closed environment. Still, his suit struggled to keep him warm in the frozen wasteland of Goventu V. Once more, he cursed the Special Research Division of the Breen Militia for not sending an Amoniri in his stead, considering that members of that bloodless species originated in such a climate, and actually required low temperatures for their survival. Trok knew well why the SRD had sent him to such a bitter world, though, and he would have requested the assignment had they not, but still, he hated the cold. He swore aloud against it, and then said, “Such places are not fit for Vironat.” He guessed that the gelid winds carried away the electronically encoded output of his helmet before his attendant even knew that he had spoken.
Trok gestured to the security officer, indicating his intent to return to the recently completed redoubt. Knowing that the guard would trail him back to the structure to ensure his safety, Trok started for the fortification’s only entrance, a single-paneled door in the center of the nearest wall. Once there, he pressed the snout of his helmet against an audio receiver and articulated the long password assigned specifically to him. The panel shot upward, and he quickly stepped inside amid a swirl of snow, leaving the guard behind as a part of the perimeter patrol.
The door sliced down behind Trok, leaving him alone in an empty, featureless anteroom. Though he saw no indication of it, he knew that standard Breen surveillance equipment worked to scan him and verify his identity. In only a moment, the single panel at the far end of the space darted upward. He paced forward and through the doorway, out into the main portion of the hastily erected facility.
Trok moved between the two security officers who guarded the inner door and over to the railing directly ahead, which lined the catwalk that ran continuously along the four sides of the rectangular structure. He peered down into the pit about which the redoubt had been constructed. There, a squad of Breen teemed over the ground, working to excavate the object recently discovered on Goventu V.
The hole in the glaciated soil had deepened, Trok saw, and a rounded tip of starship hull rose into open air, exposed. He noted the matte texture and the purplish gray color of the metal, both of which confirmed what he already knew. Although the general mass of the vessel remained hidden from view, rudimentary scans had confirmed its origin as Jem’Hadar.
This is why the Research Division sent me, Trok thought with satisfaction, and not some arbitrary Amoniri. He turned to his left and paced along the railing toward the inner corner of the redoubt, to where the catwalk skirted the enclosed space that served as his office for the project. This is why they sent me and not anybody else.
For scores and scores of days, Trok had worked not on Goventu V, but in the Alrakis system, under Keer. An engineer of considerable intellect and ability, Keer held the rank of thot in the Breen military. In the Alrakis system, he led a secret, fast-track program to design and assemble an attack cruiser equipped with quantum slipstream drive. Utilizing plans somehow acquired from the United Federation of Planets, the development team made significant progress, producing a prototype vessel in a covert shipyard buried in the Alrakis system’s asteroid belt.
As they’d neared completion of the prototype, Trok had been dispatched to the Breen homeworld. There, he reported the program’s status to Domo Brex, the appointed political leader of the Confederacy. During Trok’s time away, Starfleet operatives had sabotaged the new vessel, destroying both it and the clandestine shipyard, as well as corrupting all recorded data regarding the slipstream drive.
All data recorded in our computers and communications networks, Trok thought, but not the information I carried in my mind.
On Goventu V, Trok reached his office, took one more glance over his shoulder into the excavation pit, then entered his private area. Inside the small room, hard-copy printouts dominated the space, pinned up on the walls and spread out across his desk. Some displayed re-created drawings of Keer’s slipstream-enabled prototype ship; others, renderings of Jem’Hadar vessels; and still others, holographic images of Jem’Hadar starships in flight. Trok leaned his gloved hands on his desk and started poring over Keer’s schematics.
Throughout his time on the slipstream project, Trok had witnessed Keer’s frustrations over the incessant demands that he accelerate the production of a prototype vessel. In the end, though Keer managed to build such a craft, Trok wondered whether the flight trials would have resulted in triumph or disaster. Since the new technology utilized deflectors to focus a quantum field about the ship, that meant that the ship’s physical profile, its defensive-screen geometry, and its capacity to maintain structural integrity impacted not merely the performance of the advanced drive, but also its ability to function safely. That made the simple installation of a slipstream engine in existing starships problematic at best. Early slipstream simulations employing existing Breen vessels generated mostly failed, and often catastrophic, outcomes. That necess
itated Keer’s design of an entirely new class of ship, one that Trok had never been convinced would actually prove successful.
He swept the blueprints for the old prototype off to the side of his desktop, uncovering various three-dimensional views of Jem’Hadar vessels under power in space. As the lone survivor of the destruction of the Alrakis shipyard, Trok endured as the only link to Thot Keer’s slipstream program. He therefore ranked as a vital asset to the program’s continuation, and became the obvious choice to carry on with those efforts. Although Trok had never overseen a venture of such magnitude, the domo and the director of the Special Research Division had leaned heavily on him to accept the assignment. With equal measures of enthusiasm, anxiety, and fear, he had taken on that leadership role, knowing that the Breen Confederacy and the Typhon Pact needed it to succeed in order to achieve at least an equal military footing with the Federation and its Khitomer Accords allies.
During his tenure under Thot Keer, Trok had given a great deal of thought to the deflector and structural integrity aspects of slipstream technology. Somewhere along the way, it occurred to him that he knew of two spacefaring fleets that boasted ships with impressive maneuverability: those of the Tzenkethi and those of the Dominion. Such agility implied the generation of powerful deflectors and strong structural integrity fields. When appointed the task of making the slipstream drive a reality, Trok immediately obtained as much information as he could about the starships of the Confederacy’s Typhon Pact ally, the Tzenkethi Coalition. Unfortunately, he ultimately concluded that, with the smooth contours of Tzenkethi vessels—teardrop-shaped starships and helical harriers—their equipment could not functionally pair with the slipstream drive.
With additional research, though, Trok became convinced that he could make use of Jem’Hadar technology. He believed that doing so would allow him not only to create a new fleet outfitted with slipstream, but to adapt existing vessels in the fleet of the Breen Militia—and in the fleets of the other Typhon Pact worlds as well. But in order to begin his work, he needed to study an actual Dominion ship.
The Special Research Division had sent out a call to the Breen military. They began a search of the Alpha Quadrant for the remains of Jem’Hadar vessels. During the Dominion-Federation War, numerous such ships had been incapacitated, some of them downed on planets, moons, and asteroids. Breen scouts located forty-six such crash sites before the one on Goventu V, but none of those debris fields surrendered Jem’Hadar ships undamaged enough to allow analysis of their deflector and structural integrity grids and field generators.
But that’s about to change, Trok thought.
The Breen Militia officers who had located the Jem’Hadar ship on Goventu V theorized that the heat of its entry into the atmosphere had softened the frozen ground, perhaps even liquefied it. The vessel then sank into the muck, which eventually resolidified around it. Magnesite deposits in the soil interfered with both sensors and transporters, but basic sounding scans showed a hull mostly intact, which represented a tremendous opportunity for Trok.
Once the excavation uncovered enough of the Jem’Hadar ship, he and his lead assistant, Keln, would take their handpicked team of engineers inside to examine its systems directly, and if necessary, repair them. Trok would analyze the Jem’Hadar systems in operation, expecting to confirm the adaptability of the Dominion technology to his slipstream drive efforts. If he corroborated his convictions, he would be able to integrate the Jem’Hadar systems with a new quantum slipstream drive. After that, the Breen Confederacy and the Typhon Pact would not only draw level with the Federation and the Khitomer Accords in terms of might, but would surpass them.
Eager for the events of the coming days, despite whatever challenges they might bring, Trok stepped away from his desk and exited his office. Outside, he turned left and followed along the side wall, his boots beating a metallic rhythm against the grating of the catwalk. He headed for the midpoint of the walkway, where a ladder descended to the surface of the planet. He would climb down so that he could observe the crews carrying out the dig.
Trok suspected that it would take an act of will to keep himself from joining in the excavation. At the moment, with the way he felt, he would gladly drop to his knees on the icy ground and carve it out by hand if he thought that would appreciably hasten the opening of the Jem’Hadar ship. He did not want to wait to contribute to the rise of the Breen Confederacy.
Soon, Trok told himself, trying to tamp down his anticipation. Soon.
Gell Kamemor liked the feel of the pavement passing beneath her feet, her heels drumming against the ground as her long strides carried her quickly along the pedestrian thoroughfare. More than those sensations, though, she appreciated her proximity to the residents of Ki Baratan. Since her elevation to the office of praetor, rarely did the security dictates of her position allow her outside the physical confines of her political life. Rank certainly provided her with room to move around at her praetorial residence and the Hall of State, and she could travel almost anywhere she chose as long as her security forces had time to clear the place beforehand. But none of that alleviated her disconnection from the everyday citizens of Romulus—of whom she counted herself as one, despite her lofty role among them.
Up ahead, dispersed amid the pedestrians of Avenue Renak, a segment of the security detail assigned to protect the praetor traveled incognito. To Kamemor, they stood out collectively, moving stiffly and constantly scanning their surroundings for threats, but she doubted that anybody else on the thoroughfare noticed them. She knew that another group of guards trailed her through the city, further ensuring her safety.
It had taken nothing less than her absolute sense of urgency and a fit of temper to convince Ranos Malikan, her security director, to permit her outside among the general public. She wore a traditional Romulan robe of a crimson hue, with a decorative silver-and-black sash draped over one shoulder, and a baggy hood that obscured her features. Clad similarly—though in a robe of deep green—Proconsul Anlikar Ventel walked beside her. They had traveled via secure transporter from the Hall of State to a hub not far from their destination, to which they would make their way on foot.
As she walked, Kamemor saw on her left the broad expanse of natural growth that defined Cor’Lavet Park. The slightly sweet scent of grass and flowers reached her and immediately carried her away. Years earlier, back on her homeworld of Glintara, she and her wife had often brought their young son to a similar greensward to play and enjoy the outdoors. Later, once Sorilk left home for the military academy, Gell and Ravent resumed their visits to the park, indulging in romantic evenings there, often stretching out on a blanket together, sharing a bottle of wine beneath a candy-colored sunset.
The memories struck Kamemor with unexpected force. She had lived half a century since her son had perished; ironically, after surviving for more than a decade serving in the Imperial Fleet, he’d lost his life in the collapse of a scaffold in a chemical plant. Even after so lengthy a time, she still missed her boy, though the pain had eased over the thousands of days since losing him, her agony dulling to an ache. Eventually, time provided Kamemor with the ability not to constantly feel the gaping hole her son’s death had carved out of her. Throwing herself into her various roles as a public servant had helped.
Having Ravent by her side had helped even more. Kamemor knew that marriages did not always endure the loss of a child, but she doubted that she could have endured without her wife. Their son’s death struck both of them hard, but somehow they each found a way to be strong when the other needed it most. They leaned heavily on each other, and loved each other, and came out the other side of their ordeal with their relationship not only intact, but stronger than ever.
The loss of Ravent, Gell still felt daily.
As Cor’Lavet Park slipped past and the Orventis Arena loomed into view up ahead, Kamemor tried to push those recollections away. She had spent almost all of her adult life with a woman she respected and admired, counted upon and trusted, laughe
d with and loved, and she could cope with those memories, no matter the poignancy they evoked. But she struggled to escape the thoughts of the hundreds upon hundreds of days during which Tuvan Syndrome inexorably stole her beloved from her. The neurological disease first robbed Ravent of her motor skills, and then ravaged her mind. At some point, she grew incapable of even recognizing Gell, much less remembering and understanding the depth of their love. Over the torturous course of a decade, the relentless malady diluted Ravent’s essence to nothingness, leaving behind only the barest wisp of identity.
During those terrible days, Kamemor had withdrawn from civil service—and everything else in her life—to concentrate on battling Ravent’s illness. When the implacability of the faceless enemy became clear, Kamemor shifted her efforts to rendering her wife’s days as comfortable as possible. Eventually, even that became an impossibility. When the end had finally come, Kamemor had welcomed it, for in truth, she’d already lost the woman she loved.
The praetor followed her security throng past the front of the Orventis Arena. Often utilized to stage theatrical productions, musical concerts, and other forms of entertainment, the facility could accommodate an audience of up to fifteen thousand. Instantly recognizable to citizens not only of Ki Baratan, but throughout the Empire, it featured a parabolic roof, its sloping entrance façade lined with elliptical stained-glass windows. Kamemor and her escorts continued along one side, headed, she knew, for a rear entryway typically used by performers and closed to the public.
A sense of anticipation formed within Kamemor, and she wondered about the course of action on which she planned to embark, about its chances for success. She doubted that the Breen or the Gorn or the Kinshaya would have chosen a similar path, and she understood that neither the Tholians nor the Tzenkethi ever would have done so. In fact, Kamemor had run into opposition within her own government, though she enjoyed at least a modicum of support as well. Still, she felt profoundly alone, even with Ventel, her sister’s grandson, walking beside her. But she had felt alone for a long time.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night Page 14