by David Mack
No power signatures. Not even a single dangling wire.
No biological residue. No organic matter of any kind.
Even the interior walls had been removed.
It was precisely as Worf had expected. Before answering Martok’s summons to the Great Hall, he had concealed in his office the satchel of spy tools Zeitsev gave him. When he returned from the meeting, the tools were gone. The embassy’s internal security monitors showed no one entering or leaving his office. No one had seen or heard anything unusual.
Like Zeitsev, the tools had simply vanished.
Worf trudged back to the turbolift. Good riddance.
Chapter 67
Tezwa—Keelee-Kee
“YOUR TERMS are more than fair. On behalf of a grateful people, I offer you our thanks.”
Bilok bowed his head and wore a serene expression that belied his anxiety. The salty grit of raw shellfish on his back teeth mingled with the tart aftertaste of jeefa; together, they tasted like shame. My people are starving, he chastised himself, and I’m sharing delicacies with our conquerors.
He corrected himself: The Federation had shown no interest in behaving like a conquering power. Seated on the other side of the negotiating table were Federation Ambassador Lagan Serra and Starfleet Captain Picard. Lagan was a statuesque and regal-looking Bajoran woman whose steely eyes hinted at a past steeped in suffering. Similarly, Picard’s affable manner and practiced courtesy were marred by an unspoken sadness. They both had shown Bilok every courtesy, and their generosity on behalf of their government was more than he would have dared to hope for.
Gathered behind them was a retinue of diplomatic hangers-on that included Commander Deanna Troi, who had accompanied the captain to the previous day’s disastrous—and, in hindsight, fraudulent—peace negotiations. Standing beside and behind Bilok were numerous Gatni ministers, and a handful of moderate Lacaam Coalition ministers who had quickly distanced themselves from Kinchawn after he fled the capital. Bilok had named Tawnakel as his deputy prime minister, and he had promoted Unoro to serve as the new minister of state. The rest of the senior ministry posts were still in flux, left vacant due to internecine squabbling.
“The Enterprise will remain in orbit for the next several weeks,” Lagan said. “More starships will arrive within the next forty-eight hours, to provide security for the civilian vessels that will bring supplies and relief workers.”
“We look forward to welcoming them,” Bilok said.
Lagan affixed her signature to the aid agreement, and applied an embossed stamp of the Federation emblem next to it. She slid the oversized document across the table to Bilok, who signed it and marked it with the Tezwan double-winged crest. They both stood and shook hands, completing the ritual that had been described to him before he’d entered the room.
“Mr. Prime Minister,” Picard said as Bilok returned the agreement to Lagan. “With your permission, I’d like to pose a delicate question.” Behind Picard, the rest of the Federation personnel were slowly moving en masse toward the exits.
“Please, speak candidly, Captain.”
“The artillery that you say Kinchawn developed in secrecy…it would have required a significant number of personnel to assemble, would it not?”
“Yes, I imagine it would.”
“It would be difficult to keep so massive a project secret, don’t you think?” The captain’s tone was civilly neutral, which Bilok knew was the preferred tenor of seasoned verbal assassins.
“Kinchawn’s influence over the military was profound, Captain,” Bilok said. “But I agree—the scale of this deception was truly shocking.”
“Do you have any theories on how Kinchawn acquired that kind of technology? Was it developed here? Or did he acquire it off-world?”
“I wish I knew, Captain. But I fear its origins are as much a mystery to me as they are to you.” That answer seemed to satisfy Picard, who said his farewells and departed with the rest of the Federation contingent.
Bilok didn’t enjoy lying to Picard; he genuinely liked the man. But Koll Azernal’s warning was still fresh in his thoughts. Only hours ago, the Zakdorn had contacted him in secret, both to congratulate him on his rise to the top of the Ilanatava, and to enlist his aid in a covert effort to disguise the origins of the now-destroyed nadion-pulse cannons.
The plan was hardly as simple as Azernal liked to make it sound. Its logistics were complicated, but the gravest threat to its success was its need for absolute secrecy. It would take only one misstep, one rumor to unravel the entire scheme.
Bilok had questioned the need for such elaborate measures. “Why not simply have Starfleet help plant your new ‘evidence,’ ” he’d asked Azernal. “They’re under your command, aren’t they?”
Azernal had grimaced. “You obviously don’t know much about Starfleet,” he’d said glumly.
Bilok stood alone at the enormous table, situated in the center of the cavernously empty, ornate banquet hall. Plates of half-eaten food and glasses smeared with oily fingerprints littered the dozens of small tables spread along the room’s perimeter. Outside the wall of towering windows, the midday sky was stained dark with the smoky aftermath of the Klingons’ anger. Beyond the protected environs of the capital, Bilok knew that his world lay in ruins. He felt exposed and vulnerable.
Yesterday I feared the Klingons’ revenge. Today I’m waiting for Kinchawn to take his. I was better off with the Klingons.
More than the petty bickering of his fledgling administration, more than the heartbreaking environmental devastation that threatened his people with starvation, Bilok worried about the return of Kinchawn, who now was safely at large and backed by a private army of his loyalist partisans.
He knew the exiled Lacaam’i would come back, seeking retribution, desperate to reclaim the reins of power at any cost. Not right away, by any means; and not all at once. No, he brooded, they’ll leave us be long enough to put out the fires of their carelessness. They’ll hide while we tend the wounded and feed the hungry, bide their time while we house the homeless. When they decide we’ve repaired enough of their damage to make this a world worth ruling…that’s when they’ll strike.
The new prime minister was too adept in the black arts of politics to believe that peace would reign for long; Tezwa’s current, placid state of affairs was doomed not to last. But he had not aspired to leadership without accepting its inherent risks. He had waited years for the chance to lead his world out of Kinchawn’s militarized dark age, and into a new era of individual liberty and modernity. Azernal’s dark bargain was Bilok’s best chance to effect real change on Tezwa. And what did Azernal ask of him in return?
Some simple lies. Some smuggled contraband. Partnership in a conspiracy to frame the Tholians as the source of Kinchawn’s artillery. A few buried secrets to help avert an interstellar war that would shatter the quadrant.
It was an ignoble agenda—but if it gave his people freedom, Bilok would call it his finest hour.
Chapter 68
An Undisclosed Location
“MOST IMPRESSIVE,” Zeitsev said. “And resourceful.”
“Their efforts were adequate,” L’Haan said, clearly not as awestruck as Zeitsev by the eleventh-hour triumph of Ambassador Worf and Captain Picard. Dietz, for his own part, marveled at the joint effort, which had made a moot point of L’Haan’s invocation of an Armageddon order.
Zeitsev and L’Haan stood behind Dietz as he manipulated the data feeds to his monitor array. At Zeitsev’s request, the lights in the surveillance room had been dimmed and the rate of updates to the various monitors increased to match his heightened perceptual acuity. The swiftly changing images bathed the room in a peculiar, almost hypnotic flicker.
The two senior operatives loomed over Dietz as they studied numerous surveillance images from Tezwa, from the Enterprise, and from Earth. “Of course, the Tezwa situation is still in play,” Zeitsev said.
“Indeed,” L’Haan said. “I do not think events there will transpire
as Chief of Staff Azernal expects.”
Zeitsev tapped Dietz’s shoulder. “What’s Quafina doing?”
“Back to the Orions,” Dietz said. “Looks like he’s planning on using the Caedera again.”
Zeitsev hmmphed. “Do you have someone in place this time?”
“We’ve activated the Orion Sleeper,” L’Haan said.
“Good,” Zeitsev said. “Well done. How do you see the Tezwa situation playing out?” Dietz knew that Zeitsev was talking to L’Haan, not to him. Zeitsev rarely deigned to solicit opinions from subordinates.
“Once again,” L’Haan said, “Azernal proceeds from a flawed wargame scenario. It is highly probable that his smuggling of forged evidence will be compromised by rogue political and military elements on Tezwa.”
Zeitsev nodded. “Kinchawn’s guerrilla campaign.”
“Yes,” L’Haan said. “He will target Starfleet personnel and Federation civilians, hoping to force a withdrawal. When numerous escalations of violence fail to achieve this result, he will attempt to depose Bilok by force and order Federation personnel to leave.”
“He’ll probably succeed,” Zeitsev said.
“Unless Starfleet gets involved and defends Bilok,” Dietz said. Zeitsev and L’Haan looked down at him. Their coldly dismissive stares made it perfectly clear that he should refrain from injecting himself into the conversation.
“Indeed,” L’Haan said. “However, Starfleet will likely treat the uprising as an internal matter and withdraw from the conflict. Kinchawn will easily reclaim power.”
“At which point he’ll be looking to punish the Federation,” Zeitsev said. “He’ll try to reveal Zife and Azernal’s deal to the Klingons.”
Dietz expected to be reprimanded for not minding his own business, but he decided this was worth mentioning. “Question,” he said cautiously. “What if Kinchawn reveals the plan to the Klingons right now? If we end up at war against the Klingons, we’d almost certainly have to abandon Tezwa—giving him a free hand to depose Bilok.”
“If Kinchawn could get a signal to the Klingons without giving away his own position to the Enterprise, he probably would,” Zeitsev said, apparently not upset at the query. “But right now he’s underground, probably regrouping and avoiding signal traffic that would draw attention.”
“The question remains,” L’Haan said, “how will we respond when Kinchawn returns to power?”
Zeitsev half-shrugged; he clearly thought the answer was obvious. “We kill him and blame it on the Gatni faction. Or the Klingons. Or whoever. Bottom line—that man has to die before he gets us all killed.”
Chapter 69
Tezwa—Mokana Basin
DEANNA TROI STARED FORLORNLY into the crater, which was filled with murky water. Much of the surrounding swamp had drained into the chasm after the firebase imploded, leaving the flooded pit bounded by a slick, muddy ring. Starfleet rescue divers were surfacing from the crater pool, dragging two bodies between them. As the watery muck sluiced off the corpses’ faces, she recognized them as engineers Kelly Tierney and Matthew Barnes.
She resisted her worst impulses…fought to banish from her mind the image of Riker’s body trapped beneath all that darkness—crushed and broken, drowned…dead. Even in the absence of any proof to the contrary, she refused to believe he was gone. I can feel it. I know he’s not down there. He can’t be.
A man’s voice called out from behind her. “Counselor!” She turned to see Lieutenant Gracin from security striding toward her. “We might have something. Come with me.”
She followed Gracin into the eerily quiet jungle, where they joined security officers Lofgrin and Clemons. They moved quickly across the slippery mud. Blinding blue-white search beams swept through the trees and thick jungle foliage, some from search teams on the ground, some from the Starfleet runabouts hovering overhead. Groups of Starfleet security personnel and Tezwan civilian volunteers moved in carefully blocked sweep patterns.
More than a hundred meters from the implosion crater, Troi and her escorts reached Peart and Ensign th’Chun, who were both scanning the area with tricorders, looking for any trace of the missing Starfleet personnel. Peart looked sympathetically at Troi. “We think we have a lock on his transponder,” he said. “It’s offline, about ten meters that way, past those trees.”
Troi followed Peart’s gesture. The other search teams continued sweeping the area around them. Peart moved a little bit closer to her and kept his voice down. “You can wait here,” he said. “You might not want to see what we see.”
She had to trust her own eyes. Shaking her head, she swallowed hard to force back the nervous acid fountaining up from her stomach. “No,” she said. “I have to know.”
Peart nodded. “All right. Stay with me.”
He led her forward, flanked by a large team of Enterprise security personnel. As they clambered over some fallen tree trunks, Troi saw a mud-crusted humanoid form lying facedown in the murky slime of the exposed swampbed. Its legs were twisted at grotesque angles; one arm was stretched above its head, the other flailed out to one side.
Ensigns Liryn and Carmona kneeled beside the body and gently lifted it free of its muddy shallow grave. They rolled it over slowly, revealing the unmistakably Saurian features of Master Chief Petty Officer Razka. His torso was scorched and blasted apart, his garments nothing but filthy rags.
Troi turned away from the gruesome sight, expecting to see something much worse behind her.
Peart watched his tricorder as Danilov and Weathers carefully extracted a torn and mangled set of camouflage fatigues from the mud. “It’s his all right,” Peart said. “Danilov, check the left chest pocket.” The security officer opened the pocket and reached inside. He turned it inside out to reveal the damaged Starfleet transponder. “Bingo,” Peart said.
“The rest of the teams have finished their sweeps,” Gracin said to Peart. “There’s no trace of him, sir.”
Peart tapped his combadge. “Peart to Enterprise.”
Vale answered. “This is Enterprise. Report.”
“We’ve recovered the bodies of Lieutenants Tierney and Barnes, and Chief Razka. We also have Commander Riker’s transponder.”
“His transponder?”
“Aye, sir.” Peart glanced over his shoulder at Troi, who remained fixated on the torn, muddy fatigues. “It’s my opinion that Commander Riker has been captured.”
Troi walked over and took the shredded uniform from Danilov and Weathers. They resisted at first, until Peart silently gestured for them to let go. Troi held the tatters in her hands, felt the greasy mud against her fingers, pressed her fingertips against the fabric.
My Imzadi is alive, she told herself, her grief burning away, consumed by a fiery anger that walked hand-in-hand with her renewed hope. And I’m not leaving this planet without him.
Acknowledgments
It’s difficult for me to decide who I should thank first, because so many people deserve my gratitude. I’m sure no one will hold it against me if I choose to begin by praising my lovely wife, Kara, whose patience during the long months that I spent holed up in my home office writing this book and its companion volume, A Time to Heal, was indispensable. She tolerated my long absences, my insanely late nights behind closed doors, and my rambling digressions about plot points and characters about whom she knew not a thing.
Next, of course, I must tip my hat to my longtime friend, John J. Ordover. It was John who, in the summer of 2003, invited me to step into the breach and take on this two-book assignment. Prior to this, my published prose work for Star Trek had been limited to technical and reference volumes (the New Frontier Minipedia and The Starfleet Survival Guide) and the S.C.E. eBook novellas (Invincible, which I cowrote, and Wildfire, my solo-prose debut). Making a jump from writing eBooks to signing a two-book paperback deal, as I explained to some of my more sports-minded relatives, was akin to a minor-league pitcher being called up to the major leagues and asked to pitch a playoff doubleheader as his debut. John
guided me as I molded the story and counseled me as I hammered it into shape over the next several weeks.
Heartfelt thanks are due also to Paula Block at Paramount Licensing, for helping to curb some of the story’s early, more irrational excesses. Some of the best ideas for this book were the product of her suggestions during the story-development phase. Not only did she help prevent this tale from going badly astray, she pointed it in narratively fruitful directions that I certainly would otherwise have missed.
Let me also heap kudos upon the other authors in this series: John Vornholt, who released this Sisyphean boulder and challenged the rest of us to push it back up the hill; Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, who raised the bar on the rest of us yet again, with their gripping mix of action and character work; Robert Greenberger, whose two novels proved to be a gold mine of dramatic possibilities and set the stage for my own efforts; and the indefatigable Keith R.A. DeCandido, whose boundless energy (and remarkably fast typing skills) inspired and dared the rest of us to keep up with him. Keith deserves special bowing and scraping from yours truly, because he went above and beyond to help me out—answering frantic instant messages and e-mails (about Klingon society and customs, Star Trek continuity, his I.K.S. Gorkon books, and many other, more obscure matters) at all hours of the day and night, gently coaching me out of the corners I wrote myself into, and generally talking me down off my metaphorical ledge.
I would be remiss if I did not express my gratitude to my family—both my blood kin and my unofficial tribe. Offering encouragement from the faraway land of New England are my parents (a.k.a. David and Yvonne), and my brother, Stephen, his wife, Elizabeth, and their little ray of ever-inspiring sunshine, Julia. Keeping the fires lit for me here in the Big Apple, of course, is the increasingly infamous Malibu crowd, especially my long-suffering best friend and fellow Star Trek author, Glenn Hauman, and his indubitably better (looking) half, Brandy. Also, a belated muchas gracias to founding Malibuvian and jill-of-all-trades Kim Kindya, who verified a Spanish translation of the “Hail Mary” for my eBook novel Wildfire.