The conversation had not gone well. When Yalok refused to even speak to the senator—much less yield to his authority—Bretorius had ordered the guards to take their former captain to one of the interrogation rooms. There, an increasingly unnerved Nerla had watched in astonishment as Bretorius had applied some of the chamber’s more punitive devices in an attempt to gain Yalok’s cooperation. It had not come, and Bretorius had stopped, deciding to leave Yalok with his one good eye. But the episode made an impression on the guards—and on his aide.
Nerla had earlier seen him dress down another officer when he shamed Subcommander Quarlis for asking too many questions. Nerla had never known Bretorius to even recognize when someone else was his inferior, much less to use his power effectively. Now, having just seen him commandeer the office of the Tal Shiar officer in the Ter’ak Pen, she couldn’t stop staring.
Seated across from her at a desk in the dimly lit room, Bretorius didn’t look up from the computer interface. “You have something you wish to say, Nerla. Say it.”
“Where have you been hiding this version of yourself?” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her searching his face, apparently looking for anything she recognized. “The Bretorius I know is passive, ineffectual—and on his last chance.”
“Don’t you think being on one’s last chance could be a motivator?”
“For some people. Not for you.” She frowned. “You would be even less likely to succeed. You can’t handle pressure.”
Bretorius looked at her—and pushed away from the desk. “So the only possible explanation, then, is that you were incorrect about me before now.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He clasped his hands together thoughtfully. “Consider the tumult and distress in the Empire in the aftermath of Shinzon’s coup. The Imperial Romulan State severs from the Empire, later to be reabsorbed. Chaos is all around. Somewhere in there, a man, Bretorius, is given a role in the Senate because he is considered a zero, harmless to any one side.” The room’s sole light glinted in his eye. “But there is a difference between being a zero—and being an unknown quantity.”
She stared at him before blurting, “Come on! Do you really expect me to believe you’ve been feigning mediocrity all this time, just to . . .” She trailed off. “To do what? You’re not exactly at the seat of power, ready to make your move.”
“Don’t assume all power is in the capital—or even on Romulus,” he said.
That made her stop to think. Bretorius rose and began surveying the room, and the rooms it was connected to.
“Wait,” she finally said. “You learned something? Back at the Far Embassy, at that meeting?” He looked back at her to see her eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Did you cut a deal to sell out the Empire, somehow?”
“Not at all, Nerla. You could say I simply understand a lot more.” He patted the wall and looked up to the ceiling, considering where he was in relation to other rooms. “I understand our adversaries’ strengths and weaknesses. I understand where the pressure points are that will cause the Federation’s alliance with the other Khitomer signatories to collapse. Having the pressure come from the Empire will elevate us beyond our Typhon allies.”
“And who’s going to apply this pressure? You?” She gawked at him, still incredulous.
But he could tell his words had moved her, if only a millimeter. And perhaps a millimeter would be enough. He didn’t need much, after all. Bretorius turned and stepped to the desk where he’d been working. He passed her a padd. “I will require the following from the ship’s crew. I could arrange for these things myself—but it will go faster with your help.”
Her eyes scanned the list. “This is pretty technical. Do you even know what these things are?”
Bretorius returned a canny smile. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I think you’ve gone mad.”
He chuckled and began nudging her to the exit. “Nerla, you have two choices, I should say. You could report me to the first officer—or free the captain—and together, inform the praetor. And the reward for selling out a known incompetent?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine it would be much. You’d be back waiting tables on the bay in a week—or scraping mollusk collectors with those parents of yours.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Or on the other hand?”
“On the other hand, you could, just this once, humor a man you previously found to be feebleminded and ineffectual. A very small wager, unmissed if it is lost.” He pulled her closer, surprising her. He whispered into her ear. “But if you win, the gain could be incalculable. I promised you that you would gain stature in my employ. I will make good on that, beyond your wildest imaginings.”
Her eyes lingered on the padd, seeming to struggle with the decision.
“You’d better be right about this,” she finally said. “I’ll take it to the subcommander. What if she says no?”
Bretorius nodded toward the back hallway, leading to the interrogation chamber where they’d left the ship’s commander. “Tell Quarlis that if she doesn’t meet my needs, you’ll take the list to Commander Yalok—offering to free him if she fails to fulfill the request.”
“And then do it?”
“You won’t have to. Quarlis is this moment sitting on the bridge in terror, wondering if the Imperial Fleet will reinstate Yalok on our return. And that will make her help you.”
Nerla nodded, again impressed by his tactics. She stood in the hall, looking back at him. “And what will await us on our return?” she wondered aloud.
“Parades.”
He watched as she left.
In fact, Bretorius knew they weren’t returning any time soon. But Nerla didn’t need to know that, and she wouldn’t have understood anyway. He had work to do.
Nine
“You’re going to want to sit down for this,” Riker said, striding purposefully into the observation room aboard Aventine. “Thank you for your prompt attendance.”
Captain Dax exhaled as the others took their seats. She had just barely made it, herself. Riker was ready before she’d expected. She had been on the bridge getting Aventine under way to the location the admiral had ordered: the ship had been at warp for several minutes, racing toward some featureless point in deep space. She was pleased to see that her senior officers had arrived early. Bowers was flanked on one side of the long black polished table by Chief Engineer Leishman and Lieutenant Commander Gruhn Helkara, the saggy-faced Zakdorn senior science officer. Lonnoc Kedair, the green-scaled Takaran security chief, sat across from Bowers, along with Counselor Hyatt and chief operations officer Oliana Mirren. There wasn’t a seat to spare. An admiral’s briefing brought everyone out.
Dax sat down at the end of the table, expecting Riker to take the open chair at the far side. Instead, he remained standing.
“Some of you may know I was at a summit meeting recently with representatives of several Typhon Pact powers,” he said, his tone grave.
Dax did know that, but not much else. Starfleet had made Aventine aware of the situation in case an incident there made a rescue—or reinforcements—necessary. But when Vale had passed along Riker’s request for Aventine, she’d suggested the whole thing was a yawner. “Not much happened there, right?”
“I wish,” Riker said. “I wasn’t able to speak of it until now, but I was informed there of a new threat—one that Starfleet Command has just instructed us to deal with.”
Dax straightened in her chair. “Aventine is ready, Admiral.”
Riker walked to the room-length ports and looked out, his back to Dax and her officers. “What you’re about to hear is so secret I can’t show you the specifications for it. This is hot—red hot.” He turned, backlit by the stars streaking by. “It’s called Takedown. It is a program that, when received as a transmission via subspace, has the capacity to hijack the systems of any receiving station, like the computer worms of old.”
All eyes were on Riker as he paced the length of
the room. “Nothing can detect its presence in a system and nothing can stop it.” He paused, his brow furrowing. “And it’s in the hands of the Holy Order of the Kinshaya.”
Riker’s words prompted startled reactions in the lounge—and a whistle from Bowers. This was trouble.
The Order, Dax knew, was a theocratic society in the Beta Quadrant whose territory bordered the Klingon Empire. The Kinshaya considered the Klingons to be unholy creatures, only worthy of destruction; the Klingons had responded to that predictably. The Kinshaya belonged to the Typhon Pact, but their tendency toward rogue actions had made them a liability.
“This may sound,” Riker said, “as though the Kinshaya plan on a mass conversion, pun intended, of our subspace communication systems. Well, that’s exactly what it sounds like to me and Command. The Kinshaya could send all of us back to the age of radio waves—or could hold the Federation hostage until they got what they wanted.”
“Were the Kinshaya at the summit?” Dax asked.
“No.”
She thought for a moment. “Why would the other Typhon powers inform the Federation of a Kinshaya project?”
“Goodwill?” Riker grinned darkly. “Honestly, I don’t know. We know the other members of the Pact were none too happy when the Kinshaya tried to conquer Krios and H’atoria from the Klingons. Maybe they think this program is so dangerous that if it gets loose, it could blow back on them. The Order could use it on them, too.”
Bowers rolled his eyes. “All-day religious propaganda jamming the unsanctified. Something to be avoided.”
Security Chief Kedair clasped her hands together. “This thing, Takedown—it sounds like a virtual version of the Borg, assimilating everything in its path. How could there be security holes like that in our systems?”
“I don’t think there can be,” Leishman said. “This doesn’t sound possible.” She looked to the admiral. “Has Command sent us any specs on Takedown?”
Riker shook his head as he walked to his seat. “Sharing the data just multiplies the odds someone will use it one day.” He put a padd on the table and sat down. “Starfleet Command believes that the flaws in our systems can be fixed, but they don’t know the time frame. It won’t be overnight, I can tell you that. And if the Kinshaya discover that we know about it, they’ll act immediately.”
“A weapon unfired is no weapon at all,” Dax said. Curzon had been fond of saying that. “But what are the chances the Kinshaya would use the program on us? It’s the Klingons they hate.”
“The way Takedown works, it doesn’t matter,” Riker said. “Anyone the Klingons contacted would find their systems infected. They’d spread it just by calling for help. Someone would get the message, and then we’d all have it. Until we have a chance to fix the flaw, we’ll have to enact countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures, sir?” Dax asked.
Riker picked up the padd before him and activated it. “I’ve just sent you all mission parameters for what we’re calling Operation Shutdown. Aventine is going to sortie across the border into Kinshaya space and destroy a long-range transmission array. We believe to a high degree of certainty that’s where the Takedown program was designed and where it will be originating from.” He paused as the others checked their padds for the information. “Aventine will destroy the station’s abilities to transmit and immediately depart.”
Dax studied the mission specs. Their orders were plainly spelled out—and at the end there was that magic imprimatur: Fleet Admiral Leonard James Akaar, Commanding Officer, Starfleet Command. It wasn’t a name she saw on many orders, not ones that were issued to Aventine alone. But she could understand why this came directly from the top—as did Bowers, who spoke up as he read: “Admiral, this is a kind of mission that could start a war.”
“Or it could stop one.” Riker looked around. “The histories of many worlds are replete with preventative military operations. When they go well, they solve a lot of problems before they start. As for the rest—well, I know the risks. It’s why I recommended Aventine for this mission. It has—you have—the best chance of success.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Dax said. She pursed her lips and focused on the mission details on her screen. It would be challenging. Crossing an interstellar border was tricky in any situation; she little wondered why he and Command had selected Aventine for the mission. With its slipstream drive, it stood the best chance of getting in and getting out before too much went wrong.
But some of her officers were less eager. “It sounds—” Kedair started, before lowering her voice. “I’m sorry, Admiral, but it sounds like a trap. The Typhon powers, goading us into attacking one of their members?” She crossed her arms. “It could be an attempt to capture Aventine, to get hold of her slipstream drive technology.”
“And I would accept that if Command hadn’t already confirmed that Takedown exists,” Riker said. “The Kinshaya are too unreliable to hang a strategy like that on. I don’t think, ‘Let’s you and him fight’ is the play over there. There’s too much danger of everyone being drawn in.”
Leishman looked troubled as she paged through the notes on her padd. “We really should try to get hold of this research somehow. If we could get aboard the station, we could see how the Kinshaya were able to come up with something like—”
Riker spoke sharply. “Do you want to learn how fire was discovered, Lieutenant Leishman, or do you want to put one out?”
A little startled, the engineer sat back in her chair. “The latter, sir.”
“We’re going to take the match out of the arsonist’s hands, and we’re going to get out fast. Is that understood?”
Dax let Leishman say it for her. “Loud and clear, Admiral.”
“One more thing,” Riker said, standing. “In order for this to work, we need to observe comm silence. We cannot send nor receive for the duration of the mission. The Kinshaya could use Takedown on Aventine.” He looked from face to face. “Am I understood on this? Anything could open up Aventine to infiltration.”
“Understood, Admiral.” Dax knew her crew: they could fly across half the galaxy by dead reckoning if she asked them to. And the fewer words exchanged with the Kinshaya, the better. Where they were concerned, terms like short fuse and tinderbox came to mind. No wonder Riker had chosen the fire metaphor.
“Dismissed,” Riker said.
Dax stood and looked around at her officers. Opportunity knocks, she thought. It was time to get to work.
Ten
AVENTINE
KINSHAYA SPACE
Aventine tore out of warp like a thing afire. This would be that most difficult of operations, Dax thought: the blind raid. Riker had knowledge of the Kinshaya station’s location—and its ominous name, the Annunciator. But that was all. Starfleet’s encounters with the race were so few in number that they barely mattered as help in preparing; all that Aventine had to go on were combat profiles provided by the Klingons.
And those were of definite concern. The Romulans, Tzenkethi, and Breen had provided weapons and shielding technology to the Kinshaya in the early days of the Pact’s formation, before they knew just how capricious the Holy Order would be with their use. Dax had ordered shields to be raised immediately upon the disengagement of the slipstream drive, expecting that the Annunciator would be heavily armed.
What she wasn’t expecting was what she saw now—or, rather, what she didn’t see as Aventine raced toward the Kinshaya facility. “No defenders? Can that be right?”
Kedair spoke up from the tactical station. “Nothing. Scanning station now for defensive capabilities.”
The Kinshaya had located their station in the neighborhood of a lonely brown dwarf star; the system had only one world, several hundred million kilometers from the Annunciator. Many kinds of arrays, Dax knew, were better placed in distant, untraveled reaches—free from interference generated by populated areas and clear of occluding nebulae. That didn’t explain why the Kinshaya would leave such an important target unguarded.
Riker offered a theory. “They’re trying to make it look like they’re doing peaceful work—not attracting any attention.”
That made sense to Dax. But then again, Kinshaya space wasn’t exactly a big tourist destination, unless you were planning on making a pilgrimage to join the true believers. Who, exactly, was likely to stumble across this place?
The captain focused on the station quickly growing on the viewscreen. It resembled a jet-black sunflower, with massive gridlike petals connecting to a central spherical hub. She also recognized several more primitive broadcasting devices. “Lieutenant Mirren, are you hearing anything?”
At the ops station, Oliana Mirren brushed back dark hair to listen closely to the small analog radio receiver Leishman had fabricated for her. The engineer had come up with the idea of using a small unit not attached to Aventine’s systems so that a single crew member could safely listen in on what the station was putting out; after some thought, Riker had agreed it would not compromise their systems. A little twentieth-century Earth technology might aid in their reconnaissance. Mirren tuned the unit. “There are channels broadcasting locally in multiple languages.” Arriving at a broadcast she understood, she brightened. “I have something. It sounds like prayer. Or possibly a sermon.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Mirren began speaking slowly. “ ’Aya, and though the devils do tempt with ways of wickedness, the right-minded shall ever prevail—”
Dax shook her head. “That doesn’t exactly sound like a general alarm being sounded.”
“It’s the station’s cover,” Riker said. “A place that uses multiple broadcasting methods, subspace and local, to proselytize. Perfect for spreading mischief.”
That also made sense to Dax. And the fact that many of the channels would likely have no listeners at all was very Kinshaya.
Helkara spoke up from the science station. “Admiral, if it’s a basic audio broadcast, we could put it on the ship’s systems and analyze it.”
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