Takedown

by John Jackson Miller

  But the fact was, for the Starfleet vessels, this was an advantage. Dax was in command and leading Aventine. But Admiral Riker on holodeck one was providing the master plan for their defense of the station, coordinating Aventine with Enterprise and Titan: a commodore running a fleet action. Only this commodore had a nearly infinite capacity to process information and direct mental access to the ship’s sensors.

  Dax and her crew weren’t just along for the ride. But Riker was acting as a force multiplier, and they needed one now more than ever.

  “They’ve stepped it up a notch since Meuse undocked,” Riker said over the comm.

  “The Klingons and the Gorn are unloading on the station. We’re doing our best to deflect and divert,” Dax said.

  “They think because Meuse left, the station’s unoccupied. So now they don’t have one arm tied behind their backs.”

  Aventine swooped past the Klingon cruiser, cutting off its path and forcing it to angle away. “I don’t suppose we could tell them we’ve got people inside?”

  “They wouldn’t believe us—or they wouldn’t want to. They’re all aching to act in ways their programming won’t let them.”

  “It helps that they’re not coordinating,” Dax called out, straining to be heard over the din on the bridge.

  “They are. There’s subspace messaging going back and forth. They keep forming alliances—and breaking them and forming new ones in mid-battle. That’s our advantage. We’re not changing our minds.”

  While Riker was talking with her, another portion of the admiral’s mind was focused on the battle and their next steps, and operating his holographic doppelganger on the Far Embassy. For the first time, Dax realized the full scope of what the Cytherians had given—or foisted on—him. Just how busy could a living mind be, if it had both the capacity and the means to effect action?

  It took her breath away. Glad he’s on our side—now.

  “I’ve got Meuse hailing,” Mirren said.

  Bowers called over the communications systems. “No way we can get back aboard with the shuttle, Captain. You’re moving too fast.”

  “Abandon it. Engineering, beam them to the bridge.”

  The two spacesuited officers materialized in front of the command chairs—and several seconds later, Dax saw the shuttle explode in a hail of disruptor fire from several of the renegade vessels.

  Bowers looked back at the viewscreen, unnerved and astonished. “They weren’t shooting at us at all before we left!”

  “That’s just it. You left,” Dax said. Riker was right, she thought. A target with life signs could be harassed, but not destroyed. Meuse had been taken out the second it was empty.

  “We’ve made contact with something,” Riker said. “We’ve got to keep the defense going.”

  Like we have a choice, Dax wanted to say. But there was no point in carping now. “Look alive, Aventine. Another wave incoming!”

  FAR EMBASSY

  We’re getting nowhere with Proctor, Picard thought. And she seemed to agree.

  “Conversation futile,” she had said. “Queries irrelevant.” And now the latest, “Pointless exercise.”

  “Exercise?” Riker snapped his holographic fingers. “There’s something.”

  Picard’s hands clapped over the back of a chair to steady himself against the shaking of the station. “What have you got?”

  “Something I was thinking before I came here the first time,” holo-Riker said. “People exercise because a mind needs a body to be effective. But when I sat in the interlink chair, Aventine became my body—and I could suddenly do a whole lot more.”

  “Right.”

  “We’ve been thinking all along the Cytherians were far away—that this station was a trap to create drones for them, to give them a way to affect events here.”

  Picard figured out where he was going. “But if Cytherian power could make your mind merge with a starship—”

  “—then this station isn’t a trap. It isn’t even a station. It’s a starship, with a captain on board. And like Aventine, its captain’s lost control!”

  Disregarding the shaking of the deck, Riker climbed up on a chair and looked accusingly at Proctor. “Caster is here, isn’t he? I mean, really here. He’s aboard this ship!”

  Proctor glowered at Riker for a moment. “Impertinence intolerable,” she finally said. “Mission vacated.” Proctor turned, and her eyes fell on Picard. “Federation.”

  Her stare was so intense the captain actually took a step backward. “Yes,” he said, not understanding. He put his hand to his chest. “I am Picard, of the Federation—”

  “Existing vested intelligence inadequate. Federation agent required.” And with that, a low hum emanated from the table.

  Riker’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute. This is where I came in!” He hopped down and pushed Picard back out of the way of Proctor’s direct gaze. “ ‘Federation agent required?’ I remember now. She’s going to transform you, as she did me!”

  “Federation agent necessary condition. Newbeing Picard necessary.” Proctor’s eyes began to glow. “Resistance futile.”

  “We’ve heard that one before,” Picard said, defiant. He drew his phaser.

  “Weapon irrelevant. You can do nothing.”

  “On the contrary,” Riker said, a canny look materializing on his holographically generated face. “I’m doing something right now.”

  AVENTINE

  “Captain Dax!” Riker called from holodeck one.

  On the bridge, Dax looked up. “Yes, Admiral?”

  “Play the ace. Disable the Far Embassy. Don’t destroy it—disable it.”

  “Understood. Captain Picard is still aboard.”

  “Yes—but that’s not the only reason. I can’t explain now.”

  “Understood.” Dax looked to Bowers and Leishman, who had quickly removed their EV suits. “Are we ready?”

  Leishman nodded. “Can’t say as I’ve ever purposefully broken a system that was working. But it should do what you want.”

  “Turnabout’s fair play,” Dax said, triggering a control on her armrest. “Attention, Enterprise and Titan. Play your ace.”

  Forty-five

  ENTERPRISE

  “Acknowledged,” Worf said. He turned in the command chair to look back at Lieutenant Šmrhová. “Photon torpedoes on my mark, full spread, targeting a point near the Far Embassy’s Federation docking interface.”

  The chief security officer calmly answered, “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Time their explosions for the instant the tractor beam takes hold.”

  “Aye, sir.” Šmrhová looked down with trepidation. “I hope they know what they’re doing.”

  “Aventine, Enterprise is ready.”

  AVENTINE

  “Titan’s a go,” Christine Vale reported over the comsystem.

  “That’s it,” Dax said. “Fire!”

  Aventine, under fire itself from the renegade vessels, launched a series of torpedoes in the direction of the Far Embassy. Enterprise and Titan, closer at the moment than Aventine, did the same milliseconds later. The hurtling bundles of destruction converged on a point not far from the docking ring of the station.

  The torpedoes triggered the tractor beam at the Federation’s entrance. At that moment, the projectiles in its grip detonated.

  The brightness filters on Aventine’s main viewscreen were only barely a match for the flash that followed. The calamitous explosion lit the space all around—and sent the entire station tumbling end over end through the nebula, crackling with some kind of charge.

  “Admiral,” she called out to the air. “What’s the status aboard the station?”

  “Stand by.”

  FAR EMBASSY

  Picard had known to expect something—but nothing like the shock that seized the structure around him. The thunderous impact was but one part: striking a region well above the meeting room’s dome, it had thrown him up into the air. Landing roughly, he saw the next effects. The overhead
lighting blinked out—and what he could only call lightning shot from the center of the table to the Cytherian. Proctor let loose with a horrific screech that pierced ears still throbbing from the sound of the blast.

  Feeling the Embassy shuddering around him, Picard worried it would vent to space; a direct impact surely would have cracked it open like an egg. But it held together and so did Proctor—barely. The disembodied head slumped sideways, as if knocked to the deck.

  Nearby, the holographic Riker was still standing, surveying the changes to a room now lit only by the weak luminescence given off by Proctor. “We’ve got gravity, but that’s about it.”

  “Look there!” Picard said.

  A glow emanated from the surface of the octagonal table. It grew in intensity for several moments—until finally, like a child being born, a second giant evanescent head popped into the space just meters above the watchers.

  “It’s Caster,” Riker said. “But he looks bad.”

  It was indeed the Cytherian that Picard remembered. Withered, pale-skinned, and with white whiskers descending like shimmering tendrils. Only the violet jewel at the crown of his forehead was flickering, and the being seemed on the edge of consciousness. “Did our blast do this?” Picard asked.

  “Partly,” Riker said, walking closer to Caster. He put his hand up, reaching toward, but not touching, the being floating above. “If my control of Aventine could be shaken by a feedback overload through the tractor beam, theirs could be too.”

  Picard marveled at Riker’s acuity. The docking interface and tractor beam had been the only portions of the Far Embassy based on Federation technology; Riker had reasoned, along with Dax, that the same glitch in Aventine’s tractor beam that permitted the feedback could be introduced into the tractor beam systems at the Embassy. Leishman and Bowers had made that modification, and the three Federation ships had done the rest.

  They had two Cytherians now, their weakly radiant heads lolling in the dark. Picard was about to ask what could be done for them when he heard a noise behind him. One that told him everything was about to change again . . .

  AVENTINE

  “Playback,” Dax ordered.

  The viewscreen changed to depict, in slow motion, the exact moments of detonation. Just as the first matter-antimatter reactions were triggered, the tractor beam blazed grotesquely red. Then it winked out entirely, lost in the flash of destruction.

  From holodeck one, Riker had confirmed that his double and Picard were unharmed—and that the tactic had not only prevented the Cytherian transformation from happening to Picard, but that it had revealed another Cytherian’s presence. It hadn’t returned Riker and the other renegades to normal. Riker had explained earlier that destroying or damaging the station wouldn’t change his condition, but with half a dozen vessels charging at her, she’d dared to hope.

  At least several of the renegades had backed off. Clearly not expecting the Federation ships to fire on the station they were protecting, the leaders aboard those vessels had broken off temporarily from their assaults to study the situation. The Klingon ship chased after the Embassy as if nothing had happened; Enterprise and Titan rocketed alongside it, keeping it from attacking.

  “I mark anomalous readings in the region near the detonation,” Helkara said. “I think it’s our wayward Romulan.”

  The science officer put what he was looking at on the large viewscreen. Dax agreed quickly. “Are you seeing this, Admiral?” she called out. “D’varian is cloaked off the forward quarter.”

  “I know. There’s currently a Romulan holding a disruptor on the Captain and me,” Riker said. “The holo me.”

  Forty-six

  FAR EMBASSY

  Nerla’s boss—her former boss, she needed to think—may have been insufferable, but he had been right on all the details. She’d been able to enter the Far Embassy fifteen minutes earlier in just the manner Bretorius had predicted.

  That didn’t make the entry any less frightening. She had materialized in space, a scary enough prospect for someone who had never donned a spacesuit before. But the first thing Nerla saw after opening her clenched eyes was a raucous battle being waged not far away. Half a dozen ships of various types were battling Starfleet defenders in an attempt to reach the Embassy. She had screamed, as any right-minded person would, and then activated her propulsion, driving her toward the station. The tractor beam had caught her, bringing her to the airlock. Once she was done throwing up, she had entered the code and fled inside.

  Doffing the fouled spacesuit in the turbolift car that had delivered her, Nerla had made her way through the hallway to the destination Bretorius had described. However, before she reached the door to the meeting room, a cataclysmic boom sent the universe around her sideways—while putting out the lights. It had taken her several minutes to calm down—and more to find her weapon and the door again.

  Finally, she had emerged into the cavernous meeting room to find the two humans and the two . . . whatevers hovering over a big table.

  “Walk closer, Nerla,” Bretorius said, voice easily audible through the comm in her medallion. “I can’t see what they look like.”

  “They’re things,” Nerla said, afraid to approach. “Big head things. They seem to be asleep.”

  She could make out the Federation officers, who were lit from above by the macabre somnolent heads: both resembled individuals Bretorius had briefed her about. “Welcome,” the older bald one said. “There’s no need for the weapon. Who might you be?”

  “Her name is Nerla,” Bretorius said over the necklace’s comsystem. “She is my representative at this meeting. A meeting uncalled for, I should say. Whatever secrets you are trying to gain from the Cytherians, advanced intellect will not protect you from a disruptor. Keep a bead on them, Nerla. Drop your weapons, gentlemen.”

  Picard complied. Riker raised his hands, showing he was unarmed. “That’s Senator Bretorius speaking, I presume.”

  “And that is Captain Picard beside you, Riker—out of his alleged interlink chair, I see. I smell a ruse.” Bretorius’s disembodied laughter echoed eerily in the near-darkness. “An amusing play, Admiral. But then, you can’t really be Riker if you’re walking around over here, can you? Step closer to the light, so Nerla can have a better look.”

  Shrugging, Riker did so—and then Bretorius laughed again. “Wonderful. A mobile emitter—in actual use! I’d read about it in our intelligence files. Well done, Riker.”

  “Thanks. I think.” The Federation admiral eyed the disruptor clutched in Nerla’s shaking hands. Nerla looked back at him, nervous.

  “I’m going to want that emitter. I’m glad I sent you, Nerla. I was wondering how I would generate assistants in the future. I’d considered using our Indoctrinator chairs, but that’s a messy business. But if I mass-produce those units, I could run quite an army from a ship’s holodeck. Loyal help is hard to find.”

  “You could try actually instilling loyalty,” Riker said.

  “I’m here willingly,” Picard said.

  “Bretorius hasn’t got a clue what you’re talking about,” Nerla said. Her voice quavered—but it gained strength as she spoke. “He’s never known how to lead.”

  “I am leading now. Picard, you will deactivate Riker’s emitter and toss it to Nerla. Do so and you will not be harmed.”

  “You’ve forgotten something. The Cytherians won’t let us kill,” Riker said, taking a cautious step toward Nerla.

  “No, but like you, I have found a number of ways to get past the programming. Acts carried out by my agents seem to be a gray area. I have crafted a condition in which she believes it is either her or you. I do not feel responsible for her choice.”

  “Not—not responsible?” Nerla sputtered. “You’ve threatened to kill me if I don’t obey!”

  “I would be using the only tool I have available there for self-preservation—something else the Cytherians allow. You shouldn’t have threatened me with that weapon earlier, Nerla. You entered another gray are
a.”

  “He’s a madman,” Nerla said to the humans. “You hear that, Bretorius? You’re crazy!”

  “He’s not crazy,” Riker said. “He’s just had power handed to him. It seems not everyone knows how to handle it.”

  “Oh, like you, perhaps?” Bretorius said, indignant. “It’s been wasted on you. It always is on those who—”

  Behind Riker and Picard, the male Cytherian stirred. And the room responded, with lights beginning to come up.

  “He’s coming around,” Picard said.

  “I see. First things first, then. Nerla, destroy the Cytherians.”

  Nerla looked up nervously at the glimmering heads. “What are they? Are they even here?”

  “They’re advanced life-forms, Nerla,” Picard said. “And I believe they are here—or at least, they could be harmed. You don’t want to do this.”

  “Nonsense,” Bretorius said, his voice urgent. “We can’t know whether they’re alive and present or not. I feel no compunction against acting, Nerla—you shouldn’t either. Do as you’re told.”

  “Senator, you don’t know what shooting them would do to you and me,” Riker said, cautiously approaching her now. A few meters separated them.

  “I’ll take that chance. Nerla, shoot them, now!”

  “Enough!” Nerla removed her right hand from the stock of the weapon and clutched at the necklace. “I’m sick of you. I quit!” There was a moment of intense pain as something stabbed at her skin—and then she ripped the jewelry free from her neck. She threw it on the floor, pointed the disruptor at it, and fired. The necklace was instantly incinerated.

  She looked over at Riker and Picard, speechless and surprised in the growing light. She felt the poison beginning to course through her system. “If this is an embassy,” she said, wobbling, “I request asylum.”

  Then she fell to the deck, and said no more.

  D’VARIAN

  “Nerla? Can you hear me?”

  She couldn’t, Bretorius realized. He couldn’t hear her or see any of the other goings-on aboard the Far Embassy. The necklace communicator had simply died—but not before sending the signal that said it had delivered its fatal poison.