by Ilsa J. Bick
He tapped the viewscreen with his finger. “Grid 28. The Cardassians are rather sparse there, perhaps because there’s a nebula. Hard to get accurate readings.”
Garrett didn’t offer her opinion that if she were in command of the Cardassian patrols, she’d double her patrols, not decrease them. A nebula was a good place for a smuggler—or anyone—to hide. She knew from experience: when she’d been the Carthage’s XO and nearly flattened her shuttle against a Cardassian Akril-class ship.
“Those are Cardassian patrols,” said Garrett. “So?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Captain?” Burke asked.
“No. I see two unrelated findings: Ryn space and Cardassian space. One data set you allege was in Halak’s possession, though just how you knew to look is a little vague. Just how did you know? Never mind,” she waved off Burke’s reply before the SI officer opened her mouth, “I’ll bet you’re just dying to tell me. And the other set of data is from a stolen shuttle that wasn’t Halak’s to begin with. What am I supposed to find that’s so damned obvious?”
“Simply this, Captain. Starfleet Intelligence believes that Commander Halak did his job on Ryn very well. He infiltrated the Syndicate’s ranks; he even figured out their red ice distribution network. But he wasn’t about to share this with Starfleet. Instead, he was going to share it with the Syndicate’s rival, the Asfar Qatala.” Her dark brown eyes pegged Halak. “Because Halak’s working for Mahfouz Qadir. In fact, Halak’s family has been involved with the Qatala for years. Halak’s father worked for Qadir, as did his brother. But Halak wants to go one better. He wants to take over. Isn’t that right, Commander?”
If the shock waves that rippled through Garrett had been physical, she would have blown apart. As it was, no one said anything. The room was completely silent except for the faint beep-beep-beeping of the computer dutifully recording the proceedings. Halak’s color had gone from bronze to ashen, but he said nothing.
It was Garrett who reacted first. “Stop recording,” she said to the lieutenant. “Lieutenant Donald, you’re excused. You are to go to your quarters and stay there until I, or another officer, instruct you otherwise. Is that clear?”
Lieutenant Donald’s face was so chalky every freckle seemed splattered on with a paintbrush. “Yes, ma’am.” Without another word, he clicked off the recorder, rose, and hurried from the conference room.
Garrett waited until the door hissed shut. Then, slowly, she eyed Stern, Tyvan, and, lastly, Halak. She said nothing, and all of them, even Halak, met her gaze without flinching. She read the entreaty in Halak’s eyes. Then she stood and came around the conference room table until she was nose to nose with Burke. It gave Garrett a vicious thrill of satisfaction when Burke took a step back.
“Talk fast, Lieutenant,” Garrett said. “Make it good. No, make it better.”
“Captain, Halak’s lied, been lying for years. SI’s been watching him for some time.”
“And you didn’t think to inform his commanding officers?”
“No.” She added, hastily, “When we discovered who he really was, we thought it best to use Commander Halak to our advantage.”
“We? Our advantage? Like we’re one big happy family? I don’t recall inviting you over for Christmas.”
“Captain,” Stern began.
Garrett cut her off with an angry gesture. “I don’t care who you work for, Burke. Starfleet Intelligence has no right, no right, to jeopardize any member of Starfleet, and you can be damned sure I’ll be on the horn to Starfleet Command about this, and if I find out that you are in any way culpable, I will personally see to it that you are roasted alive.”
Two high spots of color burned in Burke’s cheeks. “I understand your anger, Captain, and I apologize for my poor choice of words. But I’m only the messenger.”
That brought Garrett up short. Burke was right, she knew, but she was so angry it was miracle her head hadn’t erupted. Ease off, girl. “Apology accepted. Now,” she said, with a curt jerk of her head, “I don’t suppose you mind filling me in, Burke. Exactly who, or what is Halak?”
Burke’s expression was stolid. “Al-Halak is not his last name. El-Malk is. He’s not an orphan, except technically. His parents are dead now. But he had a mother and a father, as well as a brother, and they were all very much alive when Halak was born on Deneb V.”
Now it was Garrett’s turn to blink. “Deneb? Not Vendrak IV? But Deneb’s…”
“A known hotbed for illegal smugglers, traders of all descriptions. That’s right. That’s where Halak’s father ended up after beating an arms trafficking charge. Mahfouz Qadir was on Deneb at the same time Halak’s father showed up. They went into business together, one big happy crime family, Captain. And then they went to Farius Prime.”
“I find it hard to believe, with that history, that Halak would have been allowed into the Academy.”
Sivek spoke. “A masterful forgery, Captain. As I recall, this type of subterfuge isn’t exactly unknown. Wasn’t there an incident only two years ago where a young man tried to hide the fact that a great-aunt was Cardassian?”
“Yes, but that was discovered.”
“Only because the young man’s forgeries were poorly made. Think, Captain. It stands to reason that, logically, for every person Starfleet catches, there must be others who slip by simply because their forgeries are more expert.”
“Or they have powerful contacts,” said Burke. “In fairness to SI, Captain, we didn’t know about Halak until after the Ryn incident. There were enough questions about exactly what happened for Starfleet Intelligence to take a good hard look at the commander. After we concluded that his records were a forgery, we started inquiries. We discovered that the commander was and has been lying for a very long time. Sivek?”
Sivek ordered the computer to display another case file. The screen filled with a full frontal and profile shot of a man who looked to be in his mid-forties and who Garrett saw at once had to be Halak’s father. There was the same set of the jaw, the same jet-black eyes.
“Najm al Din el-Malk, deceased,” said Sivek. “Halak’s father changed the family name when they went to Deneb V. Prior to that, records indicate that he was arrested on trafficking charges but released for lack of evidence. Then el-Malk disappeared. Years later, a man named Nu’man al-Halak died when his ship fell into the Deneb sun. How he ended up so close to the sun is a mystery. Nu’man al-Halak was rated an excellent pilot.”
“If he burned up, there’s no body for DNA comparison,” said Garrett. “How do you know they’re the same man, or that Halak’s related?”
Sivek acknowledged Captain Garrett’s point with a nod of his sleek head. “We don’t have definitive proof. There is nothing on either el-Malk, or Nu’man al-Halak in Federation databases. Their records appear to have been erased.”
Garrett frowned. “No records at all? That’s almost inconceivable. You’re talking influence at the highest levels for that to happen.”
“That is one conclusion. Interestingly, at the same time that Nu’man al-Halak dies, another individual, much younger, shows up in our records.”
Sivek called up another file and Nu’man’s face dissolved into the face of a young man with the same cast of his jaw and fierce set to his eyes. “Baatin al-Halak.”
“Who is he?”
“Was. He was murdered in a gang-style killing. And he was your commander’s older brother.”
Despite the bombshell, Garrett’s expression was neutral. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Halak put a hand to his brow. “But, of course, you have no corroborating proof because his DNA isn’t on file, am I right?”
Sivek conceded the point with a nod of his head. “My hypothesis, however, is sound. Mahfouz Qadir, Nu’man al-Halak’s employer, had Baatin assassinated when Qadir learned that Baatin was dealing with the Orion Syndicate. Baatin must have been alerted. Before he died, he provided his younger brother—your first officer—with false documentation, provided by the Orion Syndicate. That way, no
one would ever suspect Halak’s connection to Qadir, or Farius Prime.”
“And why would the Syndicate be so helpful?”
Burke picked up the thread. “Because the Syndicate knew that Halak would avenge his brother’s death, and the Syndicate, as the Qatala’s fiercest rivals, was only too happy to oblige. I know that Commander Batanides filled you in on our latest intelligence regarding the Orion Syndicate. Now, what I’m going to show you next, Captain, occurred when Commander Halak and Lieutenant Batra were on Farius Prime.”
Burke called up a computer record, and in another instant, an image blurred then cohered on the viewscreen. The scene had clearly been recorded at night; wedges of light fanned doorways to structures that looked to Garrett like warehouses.
She heard Halak straighten in his chair. Sparing him a quick glance, she saw that his eyes were wide, and an expression of dumbfounded amazement played over his features.
She turned back to Burke. “Where is this?”
“Tajora Street, the warehouse district right off the Galldean Sea. Those structures are all Qatala-owned.”
“Did you take these?”
“No. I’ve never been to Farius Prime, Captain. We have our sources, of course. But everything we need to hang Commander Halak is in his records, and right here. Computer, magnify.”
The computer complied, and Garrett saw a quartet of figures clustered near the entrance to one of the warehouses. She frowned as she realized that one figure’s skin was blue—the Bolian, Matsaro.
“Computer, enhance,” said Burke.
The figures wavered into focus. The image was grainy, and there were many shadows cutting across, but the figures were unmistakable. Halak. Batra. A woman, about Batra’s age, dressed in a hooded black cloak. And the Bolian.
“Who’s the woman?” asked Stern.
“Her name is Arava. She’s a highly placed member of the Asfar Qatala. Only she’s double-dealing. She’s really an Orion Syndicate operative.” Burke tapped the viewscreen with a finger. “And that’s your first officer, Captain. Make no mistake. We have every reason to believe that Halak’s plan has been to hide in plain sight, knowing that, eventually, he would come into a position of trust and authority. What’s more, he’d have free run of Federation worlds. Armed with this advantage, he went back to Farius Prime: not to help anyone, or visit an old woman who doesn’t exist. No, he went back to make contact with Baatin’s people—Orion Syndicate operatives like Arava—planted throughout Qadir’s organization. Undoubtedly, part of his plan was to map out shipments of red ice, most likely to underprotected Federation outposts, just as he tried, and failed to do in Ryn space. But his aim is to take over the business, taking down Qadir and helping the Orion Syndicate. This is a personal vendetta, Captain, and I’m sorry to say that Starfleet’s been his cover.”
Burke turned from Garrett to Halak. They locked eyes. “And as for visiting a woman,” Burke said, “the only woman Halak came to see was Arava because, you see, Arava was—and is—Halak’s lover.”
Suddenly, Garrett felt her knees buckle. Groping, she found the nearest chair, dropped. She was acutely aware of every sensation at that moment: the tiny pops and crackles of her knees; the friction of her clothing around her wrists, her throat; the way her mouth was drier than sand.
In the silence, Garrett heard Stern’s murmured, “Oh, Lord.” If Tyvan had any reaction, he kept it to himself.
Then someone said, “That’s crazy.” Halak. “That’s crazy,” he said again. His head was in his hands, and his voice was muffled, strangled and he sounded as if he were either on the verge of tears, or a nervous breakdown. His fingers clutched at his hair as if he wanted to yank it out by the roots. “Crazy, you’ve got it all wrong.”
Burke opened her mouth, but Garrett put up a hand. “What did they get wrong, Halak? Which part of the story?”
“So much of it, so much of it.”
“But not all of it?”
And then Halak looked up. His eyes were sunken and his face drawn and hollowed out, as if he’d aged a century in the last hour. “Captain,” he began, and stopped.
“Halak?”
But Halak was already shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Captain, please forgive me,” he said, finally. His black gaze locked on Garrett. “But I respectfully decline to respond as my answers may incriminate me.”
Chapter 21
For about the eightieth time, Jase Garrett wondered what the heck he was doing.
Resting, he leaned his weight into the mountain. He was sweating, and he wanted to wipe his face, but being in his suit made that impossible. He’d adjusted his temperature controls twice, but he was still fogging, and it was hard enough to see as it was. The surface was in near-total darkness, the feeble light of the brown star coloring the terrain various shades of gray, rust, and a queer, dull, washed-out bronze that verged on muddy yellow. He flicked his tongue over his upper lip and tasted salt. He squinted, speared the beam of his flash into the slope below. The light picked out slurries of bronze rock and sand-colored debris. Tricky going. He’d have preferred hiking with the light off to free up his hands. He scanned the star-studded sky. The planet’s larger moon was near the horizon and the smaller one was higher, but neither cast much light and the steely starlight wasn’t bright enough. One misstep, and he’d go tumbling. One thing he didn’t want was to get hurt here, now, kilometers from help, especially when no one knew where he was. The biosphere, where they’d been living for almost a week and a half, was nestled on the far side of the valley, in a wide cirque. If something happened, he’d lie here for hours before anyone showed. If anyone showed before his air ran out.
Smart. He peered back down the mountain. Really smart move, Jase. What had he been thinking? He should’ve been in his quarters, dutifully studying something. Astromechanics. Parallel plane differential calculus. Something. But nooo. He was out here, mucking around over red rocks on a dead planet, trying not to get himself killed.
And being tugged—pulled—somewhere. He felt it, in his mind. He knew going any further was nuts, totally crazy. But when he thought about turning back, a mosquito whine at the back of his brain started: a mental tug that had led him to stand on a rocky face above a dead lake on a blasted world.
And something really bad had happened here. Jase angled his light behind and back up the mountain. Maybe explosions, or a war, a really bad war. Here, the sides of the mountains had fallen away, like orange wax melting under a hot flame. The pass had disappeared and been replaced by a series of chutes that jagged down the mountain, almost as if water had scoured out the rock, leaving deep, wide furrows. The steep mountain chute he’d chosen was littered with rust-colored scree and rubble. There was loose rock and scree everywhere, and that made the going treacherous, like picking his way over a vertical sheet of glare ice.
He’d found a pass incised into the rock about a kilometer northwest of the biosphere. At first, the pass had looked like nothing more than a dried stream, and Jase would have trudged by. But then that mental clarion call tickled his brain and when he got right up to the earth and swept the ground with his flashlight, he saw the faint but unmistakable impressions of footprints worn into the rock. From the people who used to live here. Staring at the footprints, Jase had felt a cold finger of dread trail along the knobs of his spine. Ghosts. Jase had felt them from orbit and then felt them again, stronger, on the surface. There were ghosts here, ghosts that floated just out of sight, hovered behind the rocks. Lived beneath the ground.
He’d taken the path anyway.
Nerves, he told himself as he trudged along, the beam of his flashlight punching the semi-darkness. Just nerves. Heck, who wouldn’t be a little nervous: stuck on a dead planet, a zillion kilometers from anyone, and cooped up in a biosphere with a guy like Su Chen-Mai?
Jase’s eyes darted right and left, scouring the steep mountain terrain. Twice, he could’ve sworn he was being followed. Twice, he’d ducked into the shadows, nerves jangling. But there’d been no o
ne. Just his imagination: nothing more.
He checked his air. Eight hours left. At the rate he was going, he probably had just enough air to make it a third of the way down before he had to turn around. Again, he considered going back. Again, he discarded the idea. Might as well keep going for as long as he could, see how far he got. Next time (what was he thinking, there was going to be a next time?), he’d bring spare air, maybe leave it somewhere so he could change out and get back without having to rush.
He sidestepped, careful to keep his weight angled into the mountain. His feet bit into the earth, and he knew they crunched rock, though he heard nothing but his own breathing because there was no atmosphere to carry the sound. He wished there was something else to focus on but himself: his breathing, the fact that he was sweating so much he felt oily. He was sore, and his thighs trembled with fatigue and a hot burn from muscles that hadn’t been used in quite this way for months and months. His knees creaked and screamed with pain from the long downhill trek. His nose itched, and this was guaranteed to drive him crazy. And (wasn’t this just his luck?) he had to pee. Really bad. Just the thought made his groin clutch.
But there wasn’t anything he could do about the sound, his aching muscles, the way his nose itched so much his eyes watered because he was in a stupid environmental suit, a couple four, five kilometers away from the biosphere, under a dead sky littered with the hard, sharp points of millions of stars. There was something he could do about having to pee. He just didn’t want to. Not in a suit. No matter how clean everyone (his mom, his dad, but especially his mom) said it was, no matter how well the suit grabbed all that stuff and recycled it, or did whatever. No way.
He hadn’t planned any of this. Oh, he knew that his predicament (the pain in his thighs, the itch in his nose, the need to pee really bad) was entirely his own doing. He couldn’t even claim that he was just a stupid kid because he wasn’t a total kid, and even when he had been, he hadn’t ever been stupid. Like, he shouldn’t even have been in the suit. But either he waited until all the adults were gone then steal a suit and sneak out of the biosphere and not tell a soul (not even Pahl) and risk getting grounded for life; or go absolutely-stark-raving-bonkers-bathouse-crazy with boredom. Probably his dad wouldn’t ground him for life. Probably.