The Enterprise captain studied her—and then surveyed the table. “Strange that the Cytherians would force him to make these attacks and still grant him any latitude about them,” Picard said. “It’s an odd way to provoke a war.”
“Everything about the Cytherians is odd,” Worf said.
Picard grinned. “You said that about the Romulans.”
Dax appeared to think for a moment—and then she reached forward with both arms, gathering the containers together in a bunch. It broke Dygan’s concentration. “What?”
“We can’t just save Riker,” she said, eyes on the cluster of glassware. “Don’t you see? We have to save everyone, or whatever they’re trying will work.”
Picard nodded. “You’re right.” He was stunned that it hadn’t occurred to him that way before. “What do you suggest?”
“The Cytherians did this—and they’re the only ones who can undo it,” Dax said, drawing her arms back. “We know where they are. The Far Embassy. We just go back and make them do it.”
Picard stared. “Will can’t disobey his orders. But I don’t know that we can do this without him.”
“Then we figure out a way to do it with him.” Dax stood up. “Right now he’s the smartest human who’s ever lived. I bet that’ll help.”
Thirty-six
Picard was talking about him, Riker knew. He had seen the captain speaking to the others in the dining room through Aventine’s sensors, though he had chosen not to listen in. It wasn’t because he was suddenly subscribing to human boundaries again; rather, it seemed like an unnecessary waste of mental resources. As momentarily comforting as Picard’s presence had been, the captain wasn’t likely to come up with any solution Riker hadn’t considered—and rejected—a thousand times in the last hour.
Neither would the engineers, working all around in the holodeck before his mortal form. Geordi La Forge had brought in several of his crack computer specialists in an attempt to reverse-engineer the interlink chair; together, with Leishman, they had moved to the outer hallway to take a quick sustenance break. It was one more thing Riker no longer needed, not when he could beam replicated nutrients into and unwanted products out of his body. He supposed the engineers had felt more comfortable dining without their motionless admiral staring blankly at them.
Only one had stayed: Nevin Riordan, Aventine’s aging wunderkind. He had been unaccounted for on the roster during Riker’s renegade stretch and had apparently played a role in making the contact with Enterprise. Dax and Leishman had allowed the young man to aid efforts on the holodeck, though it was clear to Riker they had both regretted it. The guy was a hell-raiser, supporting all his ideas with equal fire, whether he was correct or colossally wrong. It didn’t take a starship computer to see why he was eating alone.
Then again, Riker thought, maybe there was another reason. Riordan had eschewed the replicated office’s furniture to eat while sitting on Deanna’s prized Medaran rug—a place where he could continue staring up at Riker. It would have made the human Riker uncomfortable, but the admiral was past such things.
“WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND, ENSIGN?”
A little startled to be addressed, Ensign Riordan found his answer quickly. “Does it hurt?”
“THE INTERLINK? NO, NOT NOW.”
“That’s amazing,” Riordan said. “What you’ve been able to do—I really envy you. I’ve been working with computers my entire life—and I’ll never get as close to them as you are now.”
“I’LL TELL YOU WHAT HURTS. NEVER HOLDING MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER AGAIN.”
Riordan chuckled.
“YOU FIND THAT FUNNY?”
“No, that’s not it.” Riordan crumpled up a wrapper. “It’s just that marriage and family are not in my program. So I think the wrong one of us got the chair.”
“DON’T ASSUME THAT PRESENT CONDITIONS ARE PERMANENT. YOUR FUTURE MAY BE DIFFERENT THAN YOU IMAGINE.”
Riordan shook his head, curls going this way and that. “You don’t know me, Admiral. I’ve been called ‘the human abrasive.’ No one’s about to pair off with me—and I wouldn’t think much of anyone who would.”
“THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM.” Riker paused before continuing. “THE FIRST PERSON TO SIT IN A CHAIR LIKE THIS HAD THE SAME PROBLEMS. YOU’RE DIFFERENT, FOR SURE—BUT TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN. REGINALD BARCLAY LACKED SELF-ASSURANCE.”
Riordan guffawed. “Haven’t you heard? I’ve got shiploads.”
“BARCLAY GOT SELF-ASSURANCE WHEN HE WAS TRANSFORMED BY THE CYTHERIANS. BUT I’M NOT SURE BEING IN MY PLACE WOULD GIVE YOU HUMILITY.”
“If I had your powers, I wouldn’t need it.”
“WHICH IS ANOTHER REASON THIS SEAT IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU. POWER HAS ITS OBLIGATIONS, MISTER RIORDAN. PERHAPS WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, YOU WON’T BE STUCK AS AN ENSIGN ANYMORE.”
Riordan nodded—then smiled awkwardly. “Did I just get a counselor chat from an admiral?”
“OR A COMPUTER, IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE.”
He looked up at Riker. “It kind of does. Thanks.” He started to stand, tray in hands.
“LET ME GET THAT,” Riker said. The ensign’s tray vanished in a transporter glow.
Riordan laughed. “That’s great. But I think if I were in your chair I’d have better things to do.”
“I HAVE CHOSEN TO WAIT IN THE HOPES THAT TWO ETERNITIES THINKING ON A PROBLEM WOULD HELP WHERE ONE WOULD NOT. THE RESULTS ARE PREDICTABLE.” His voice rose in urgency. “CLEAN THE CRUMBS OFF YOUR COLLAR. THE CAPTAINS ARE COMING.”
Riordan straightened himself and looked toward the archway. Picard appeared with Dax right behind him. Riker had seen them discussing something just outside with the engineers. “Will, we need to talk,” Picard said.
“MY OFFICE DOOR IS OPEN. I HAVE WHOLE MILLISECONDS WHERE I’M NOT DOING ANYTHING.”
Picard stepped before him. “I believe there may be a way to free you from this—but we cannot do it for you alone. We must do it for all of those who the Cytherians have elevated. Else this madness will never end.”
“I HAVE CONSIDERED THAT. WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN MIND?”
“The Far Embassy seems to be the key,” Dax said. “Could we eliminate your . . . your gifts—and the gifts of the others—by destroying or otherwise deactivating the station? Is that even possible to do?”
“TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION: YES, IT CAN BE DESTROYED WITH RELATIVE EASE. WE FOUND THAT OUT WHEN WE DESTROYED THE CYTHERIAN PROBE WE ENCOUNTERED, ON THE D.”
Picard nodded. “It had begun to pursue us—bombarding Enterprise with energy. I admit I never quite understood why it chased after us when it had already successfully interfaced with Barclay. Or why it was so easy to destroy.”
“THEY HAVEN’T SHARED THAT WITH ME. BUT DESTROYING THE PROBE DIDN’T CHANGE BARCLAY’S CONDITION AND NEITHER WILL OUR DESTROYING THE FAR EMBASSY. I WILL REMAIN AS I AM NOW. THE GIFT, AS YOU CALL IT, REMAINS GIVEN UNTIL TAKEN BACK. AND THE GIVERS ARE UNTOLD LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.”
“That is why they called for us,” Picard explained to Dax. The Cytherians could not, or would not, make the trip themselves. “The one named ‘Caster’ was called that because he cast out the lines to retrieve visitors.”
“Glad I’m not the only one who was fished in,” Dax said. “But maybe there’s another play here. Unlike that time, the mechanism that transformed you still exists. Maybe we could get in and reverse the process.”
“I HAVE CONSIDERED THAT, TOO. IT ISN’T POSSIBLE. SUCH A DEVICE, IF PRESENT, MIGHT NOT BE UNDERSTANDABLE EVEN BY ME. BUT IF IT WERE—AND A REVERSAL WERE POSSIBLE—I WOULD HAVE TO RE-ENTER THE STATION ITSELF. AND I AM CLEARLY NOT IN A POSITION TO WALK THROUGH ANY AIRLOCKS.”
“I’m not going to give up on you just because you can’t fit through a damn door,” Picard said. “Would we be able to transport you inside, if somehow we kept the link to the main computer aboard Aventine?”
“THE FAR EMBASSY HAS A TRANSPORT INHIBITOR FIELD IN OPERATION AROUND IT.” He paused. “AND AS YOU HAVE ALREADY SAID, IT’S
NOT ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH ME ALONE. WE WOULD NEED ALL THE OTHERS PRESENT. AND I DON’T THINK WE CAN GET THEM TO JUST—”
Riker paused. Picard looked at Dax and then the admiral. “What is it?”
“I THINK I HAVE SOMETHING,” Riker said. “I WOULD HAVE TO LEAVE NOW, JEAN-LUC—LEAVING YOU AND ENTERPRISE BEHIND TO WORK ANOTHER PART OF THE PLAN. WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO DO THAT?”
Ezri Dax’s eyes widened—and her mouth dropped slightly open. Riker recognized the facial expression: “Not this again.”
“I’m sorry,” Dax said, shaking her head. “But we just spent a lot of time trying to get control of our ship back from you—and trying to reach Captain Picard. I’m not sure we really ought to beam him off and leave him behind.” She looked up at Riker. “No offense.”
“I UNDERSTAND. BUT YOU’D HAVE COMPLETE BRIDGE CONTROL THIS TIME—UNLESS WE ENCOUNTER A SITUATION IN WHICH MY EXPERTISE IS NEEDED.”
Dax studied the seated Riker with caution. “And I would decide when those situations were?”
“OF COURSE. YOU CHOOSE WHEN YOU CALL ON AVENTINE’S COMPUTER NOW. THIS WOULD BE NO DIFFERENT. AND IF IT MAKES YOU MORE COMFORTABLE, BE AWARE THAT MY PLAN REQUIRES COMMANDER LA FORGE REMAINING ABOARD.”
Dax thought about that for a moment and looked to Picard. She sighed. “All right.”
Picard had been wearing half a smile since Riker got his idea. “Welcome back to Starfleet, Admiral Riker. We await your orders.”
Thirty-seven
D’VARIAN
“Nerla, will you marry me?” Bretorius asked.
Nerla stared. No words emerged from her mouth.
“Ah, you’re speechless,” he said.
“That’s not it,” the senator’s assistant replied. “I was just thinking that before this week, I would have laughed at you—and after I was done, I would have selected from a thousand reasons to say no.”
“Ah. And now?”
“Now,” she said, rising from her seat in the corner of the room, “I would stick with the main ones. You’re married.”
“No longer relevant.”
“I have no interest in you.”
“You are interested in power.”
“All right,” she said, walking around to face him. “Then how about this: you’ve willingly locked yourself inside a torture device—and there’s lightning coming out of your head?”
Bretorius smiled. “You do amuse me.”
She was right, of course. All the technical work he’d had done in the Tal Shiar office had prepared the brig for what he was doing now. He’d had ODN cables run from the agent’s computer to one of the torture chambers. Then, once he’d secured the deck against infiltration, he’d done the rest of the work himself, connecting the equipment to the very special chair in the chamber.
It was called a Taibak Indoctrinator, named for the Romulan officer who had developed it. Taibak had used it, memorably, on Enterprise’s Geordi La Forge in a failed intelligence mission. D’varian and many other warbirds had them—and Bretorius saw in it the answer to his needs. In its basic design, the chair used probes to electrically stimulate neural implants surgically inserted in victims’ visual cortices. La Forge—at that time—had implants and connecting ports already, simplifying the process. By using his newly gained technical prowess, Bretorius had constructed an interface allowing a mental connection with no implants. Most important, he was able to transform the Indoctrinator into a two-way device, allowing part of his intellect to migrate into D’varian’s main computer.
It did, however, require him to be immobilized within the macabre furnishing, with its metal forehead and chin restraints and wrist clamps to keep his mortal form from trying to escape. Birth was a painful process, and even birds of war sometimes wanted to remain in the egg. But once Nerla had been persuaded to help lock him in the device, the connection had been made—and he quickly bested the electronic defenses of D’varian’s main computer. Little had Yalok known when speaking to Bretorius earlier that the real commander of the ship was in the next torture chamber over.
Bretorius could have used the vessel’s holodeck, he imagined, but that would have sacrificed the protection the brig’s location afforded. He also wasn’t certain he would be able to survive detachment from an interlink created there—not that such a parting was remotely desirable.
The connection was more than sufficient for his needs, in any event. He had easily secured the deck by beaming all troublemakers to the farthest ends of the ship: one benefit to Bretorius of the D’varian’s twin-hull design was that it could be massively inconvenient to get from place to place. He had succeeded in disabling the six communications arrays assigned to him with plenty of time left over before the Cytherians’ deadline to reach the rendezvous point.
He knew their names now. The computer had given him that after his connection. The Federation had met the Cytherians once in an encounter that Romulan intelligence had learned about. The file gave him the idea for his interlink device. In him, they had wrought something miraculous: the next evolutionary stage of the Romulan people.
That was deserving of awe—and consideration. “You still haven’t given me a good reason why you won’t marry me,” he said to Nerla. He was still able to speak directly through his Romulan form; another benefit of using the Taibak Indoctrinator rather than another interlink method. “You needn’t worry about carnal matters; I no longer think in those terms.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“You would be empress to an emperor—or better still, the high priestess to a god.”
“A god that can’t go anywhere,” Nerla said. “You’re tied to the ship’s systems!”
“I can go anywhere the ship goes. And I’m not so sure my physical form can never leave this room.” He could already visualize a number of methods that might allow him to retain his Romulan body. That was a problem he intended to work on in the future—once he had dealt with more immediate problems.
Such as his deification. “We have had enough of praetors, proconsuls, and emperors,” he said. “I was thinking of one of the ancient Terran traditions—”
“How do you know those?”
“I told you, I have full access to D’varian’s archives. They are quite encyclopedic in their study of our opponents. And it would please me if you would not interrupt me again!”
Nerla shrugged. “Sorry.”
“As I was saying, in one tradition, each domicile had its own household deity—an icon or totem ruling over the home. I see the forces on the galactic map as houses, and now one member each of eight different races has been elevated. There can be no doubt in what the Cytherians have intended: a contest of champions, pitting our greatest against our greatest.”
Nerla said nothing for a moment, trying to process the wild theory. But then she nodded. “If they’re truly an elevated species, perhaps they see this as a way for the people in this region to fight it out one-on-one, without full-scale war.”
“There’s the rub. They may mean for my powers to expire after a time, after their aims are achieved. But I will not allow this.”
“I’d be more worried about you expiring. I’m not going to stick around here and feed you—or anything else,” she said, not hiding her distaste.
“I told you, I have no desire for physical sustenance. The body is a thing to fuel the mind—and mine is fueled like a dwarf star in a warp core. And while my body will need tending to, I am certain caretakers of some kind can be found from among our billions of slaves.”
Nerla shuddered. Every few seconds since he’d transformed himself, Bretorius had thought she might bolt for the exit. But he’d made sure she had nowhere to go. “What concerns you now?”
“This plan of yours to seize the Empire,” she said. “Presuming the Cytherians do release you at some point—”
“Or I free myself.”
“—or that, you’re planning to win popular acclaim with feats against the Federation.”
“And our more feckless a
llies.” He smiled. She understood his plan.
“And then on top of all of this, you’re going to use the information you got from Commander Yalok to remove the existing government.” Nerla shook her head. “I don’t see any Romulan being a party to that right now. Not after the years of hell we’ve been through.”
Bretorius laughed. The sound resonated in the small chamber.
“What?” she asked. “You have an idea?”
“My dear, I have an agreement. One which I just made while you were talking. If only you could see what I see.”
Nerla looked back to the large screen on the wall. “Show me.”
Bretorius gave a mental command. The panel flickered and resolved into a split-screen image featuring two alien figures. “You’re looking at Klingon General Charlak, future emperor of that body—and Gul Rodrek, soon to rule Cardassia. They have agreed to assist me—in exchange for mutual considerations.”
Nerla looked back at the two on-screen. “I thought the communications networks were damaged. Where are they?”
“Why, on their own ships—right off our starboard and port bow,” Bretorius said, grinning. “We’ve reached the rendezvous point. A new Summit of Eight is about to begin. Only this one will end quite differently.”
Thirty-eight
Whether the Cytherians had known it or not, the location they selected for the rendezvous had proved perfect for several of their agents. Located somewhere between the Azure Nebula and H’atoria, the Kalpaius system had several worlds at least minimally supportive of different kinds of life.
That had been a boon to the Cytherian-touched diplomats whose ships still had recalcitrant crew aboard. The other renegades faced the same limitation Bretorius did: for whatever reason, the Cytherians had compelled them to complete their tasks at minimal cost to lives. That meant they’d been forced to hold at bay any crewmembers they hadn’t been able to win over or dupe.
But the Kalpaius system offered a solution. Bretorius had beamed down several hundred Romulans to the fourth world in the system. He’d determined, from their behavior and psychometric profiles, they would never willingly participate in his new order; and while the notion of using Taibak Indoctrinators to create puppets was one he’d consider again in the future, there was no time for that now. Others with site-to-site transporter technology had done the same; Zyene, the Tholian commander, had beamed her troublemakers to the infernal first planet in the system. It amused Bretorius that Subcommander Quarlis and the other problem children of D’varian were now on an island, up to their armpits in Klingons, Ferengi, and Gorn. Maybe they would all do each other in.
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