Star Trek: The Next Generation - 115 - The Stuff of Dreams

by James Swallow

  “Of course,” she broke in. “I’m a full Betazoid. The only telepath on the Newton. He knew that if we were in close proximity to each other for any length of time, I would sense his intentions.” Rhonu folded her arms. “That goes a long way toward explaining how I don’t know his face. He’s been avoiding me.”

  “It’s nothing personal,” said Norgadd. “So. Shall we get down to the heart of it, then?”

  Picard nodded. “Indeed. I suggest you cooperate with us, or—”

  “Or what?” The smile became an oily grin. “You’ll set your pet Klingon on me again? I admit, you got one over on me before, but I’m wise to you now. There’s no terror in your threats.”

  “I think I could change that opinion,” said Šmrhová coldly. “If everyone else would just like to step out into the corridor for a little while.” Her eyes bored into the prisoner’s, and he blinked.

  “You can’t lie to us,” Rhonu snapped. “You can’t lie to me. I’ll know it before you even open your mouth. Do yourself a favor. Earn some goodwill. Start by telling us who you work for, and why you are here.”

  Norgadd’s smile faded. “I’m an independent espionage contractor, based on Rigel. But then you surmised that already, didn’t you?”

  “You’re part of the Orion Syndicate?” said Picard.

  “Not exactly. I pay them a fee for my . . . work permit. But that’s all. In return, they assist me with support, equipment, new identities—”

  “Like Een Norgadd’s?” demanded Worf. “The man whose face and life you stole is most likely dead.”

  “I honestly don’t know.” He tried to shrug off the accusation. “I try not to dwell on that sort of thing.”

  Picard studied the prisoner. “The Kinshaya. What do they want?”

  “They want what I know.” The spy paused, eyeing Rhonu as he considered his next words. “That ribbon-thing, the nexus? There have been rumors that it has temporal properties. And if the Federation want so badly to protect it, it must be valuable. They want to know what makes it tick.” He spread his hands. “I was paid to infiltrate this ship and gather intelligence. If you want to know exactly what I learned, I suggest you offer me a larger fee than the . . .” He paused, almost faltering. “Than the Holy Order did.”

  Rhonu seized on his words. “What were you going to say?”

  Picard glanced at her. “What is it, Commander?”

  “He was about to say something else, but he caught himself in time.” She leaned in closer. “Who are you really working for?”

  “I told you, the Kinshaya!” he spat back. “That’s not a lie!”

  “No,” admitted Rhonu, “but it’s not the full truth either.”

  From the very start, there had been a nagging suspicion in the back of Jean-Luc Picard’s mind over the appearance of the Kinshaya in this area, something that didn’t tally with his understanding of the Holy Order’s current political status. According to what the Federation knew, the once hard-line fundamentalist zealots of the Kinshaya theocracy had been unseated by the more moderate Devotionalist movement, who eschewed the violence and xenophobia of their forebears. A blatant act of espionage like this was hardly in keeping with their newer, less belligerent outlook, and Picard said so. “Kinshaya warships typically deploy in packs of four or more. And yet there are only two nearby.” He turned to study the prisoner. “I don’t think we’re talking about the legitimate Order government here at all. I think this man is working for the zealots, the remnants of the old Kinshaya Episcopate.”

  The Orion spy grimaced and Rhonu nodded, reading his thoughts despite his best attempts to conceal them. “They still consider themselves to be the legitimate government,” said Norgadd. “They hate the Devotionalists even more than they hate outsiders. They want a return to the old ways.”

  Picard exchanged a look with his first officer. And what better method to turn back the clock than with a temporal gateway like the nexus? Worf nodded slightly, thinking the same.

  “That would explain the fewer vessels. The hard-liners are on the outs, underarmed and undermanned,” noted Haln. “Even the rest of the Typhon Pact are giving them a wide berth.”

  Norgadd blew out a breath. “There. You have what you want. I cooperated. Now let us have a conversation about me. I want to be released.”

  Šmrhová gave him a pitiless look. “Into space, I hope. Without an environmental suit.”

  He ignored her and went on. “I am an Orion citizen and I am not subject to your laws! You can’t hold me. I demand you turn me over to my own government!”

  “In my experience,” said Haln, “Orion law is more about how deep your pockets are than justice and due process.”

  “You have committed serious crimes aboard a Federation vessel,” said Picard, as what remained of his tolerance for the spy faded. “You have put hundreds of lives at risk, willfully caused injury . . . and you are guilty of the premeditated murder of Starfleet officers! You, sir, are going to answer for what you have done. In full.”

  “What?” Norgadd’s face dropped in a moment of genuine shock. “You . . . you think that I was responsible for what happened in the engineering bay?” He spat out a bitter laugh. “I am an infiltrator, not an assassin!”

  “But you were there,” Worf insisted. “We found DNA traces that match the genetic mask concealing your Orion physiology.”

  “Yes . . .” He blinked, raising his hands in a gesture of self-defense. “The Kinshaya . . . they wanted me to sabotage the attempt to destabilize the nexus, but I couldn’t get access to the power regulator subsystems. Someone else came into the bay and I was interrupted. I had to flee in order to preserve my cover!” The spy shook his head. “And frankly, if I had interfered with your vessel, I would have made a better job of it! Why would I put my own life in danger from an uncontrolled power surge?”

  “A transparent lie,” rumbled Worf.

  “Actually,” said Rhonu, her words grim and serious. “It isn’t.”

  Picard glanced at Worf. “The other DNA trace you discovered . . .” The captain shot a look at the prisoner. “Who interrupted you? Did you see them?”

  Norgadd shook his head. “I had to get out of there or risk compromising myself. I never saw who it was.”

  Commander Rhonu turned away and walked a few steps toward the far side of the brig. Her expression was a mixture of anger and frustration. “Every word of that was the truth,” she said as Picard came after her. “The Orion was there, but he didn’t sabotage the power regulator.”

  “If not him, then who?” said Worf.

  Picard nodded slowly. “And why?”

  * * *

  The captain found his chief medical officer hard at work in her office alcove, just off the Enterprise’s sickbay.

  “Jean-Luc?” Once again, she saw immediately that he was troubled, and she reached out a hand to rest on his as he took a seat opposite hers. “What’s wrong? La Forge said you caught an infiltrator on board the Newton . . .”

  “We did,” he told his wife, “only to discover that he is innocent.” He paused. “Well, innocent of the sabotage, at least.”

  She called up a file and turned the monitor screen in front of her so Picard could see it. The display showed two broken strings of DNA. “Your erstwhile Mister Norgadd is a perfect match for the second trace Worf discovered. Once I had a complete bio-scan, the comparison was clear.” Beverly overlaid another pair of DNA strings, these whole and untouched, on top of the others. The scan program pronounced them identical. “One baseline trace showing hidden Orion biology, one a synthetic mask creating a false return that reads as Arkarian. With skin pigmentation changes and some minor dermal surgery, he could pass all but the most invasive of scans.”

  They were alone, so Picard allowed himself a moment to let his guard down. He frowned and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “We made our bluff and we won. But we didn’t realize there was another player at the table. The real player.” He leaned forward. “The other trace, the more d
egraded one, that has to belong to the culprit.”

  Crusher sighed. “I wish I had better news for you, Jean-Luc. But I’ve been going over Lieutenant Mimouni’s report and I can’t fault her conclusions. There’s simply just not enough material remaining to rebuild the structure. All we could extract were a few partial genetic markers.”

  “Can you show me?”

  She nodded, and worked the touchpad beneath her screen. “With this, we’re effectively back to square one. A full bio-scan of each crew member would be needed to find even a partial match. And even with that, I’d guess that more than a dozen of the Newton’s crew would share these markers, and twice that many on board the Enterprise.”

  Picard’s features threatened to harden into a stony scowl. “I left Worf on the bridge before I came down here. Glinn Dygan informed me that our Kinshaya observers have decided to take a more proactive stance. They’ve dropped their emission cloaks and raised shields.”

  “Do you think they’re going to attack us?”

  “They refuse to respond to any hails.” He shook his head. “It’s just saber rattling, for the moment. Although my first officer is quite enamored of the idea of a punitive first strike against them.”

  “The Kinshaya have always reviled the Klingons. Their holy texts talk about them as if they are demons, creatures that are less than alive. It can’t be easy to face that kind of blind hatred.”

  “Yes. But the Holy Order have never been fools. They won’t attack unless they think they have the advantage.” He paused. “If it were us just against them, Enterprise could hold its own. But if we have to keep one eye on the wounded Newton . . . we lose our edge.”

  “Here.” Crusher turned back the screen once again, and this time it was a trail of genetic markers, arranged like the keys on a piano. Many were missing entirely, lost and undetectable, others smudged as though they were corroded. Only a few were intact.

  Picard’s gaze ran along the list, scrutinizing every single entry, trying to find something that connected—

  He stopped suddenly. “Beverly . . .” He tapped the screen, highlighting a series of markers. “These traces . . . What would cause them to appear?”

  “Do you see something?”

  “I’m not sure.” But an ice-cold sensation was building in Picard’s gut, the onset of a possibility that disturbed him greatly.

  Crusher read the screen. “Markers like these would be present in people with minor genetic drift mutations. They’re caused by some benign varieties of correctable birth defects, or left behind in survivors of certain kinds of viral infections. . . .”

  “A virus?”

  The next things he heard were the strident, hard-edged words of his first officer. “Bridge to sickbay!” Commander Worf’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Captain Picard, respond!”

  He tapped his combadge. “Bridge, this is the captain. Report.” Picard’s gut tightened; he almost knew what would come next before it was spoken.

  “Emergency signal from the Newton, sir. Their ventral shuttlebay doors were forced open. The runabout Cam has been launched without authorization, one life sign on board.”

  He felt the weight of grim certainty settle on him. “On what heading, Commander?”

  “A direct intercept course with the nexus. The Cam has raised shields and is emitting a scattering field to fog our targeting sensors. We cannot establish a tractor beam lock.”

  “Of course,” said Picard, almost to himself. “He would have anticipated that. . . .”

  “Orders, sir? Shall we pursue?”

  The captain bolted to his feet and made for the door. “Negative, Mister Worf. Hold station. I’m on my way up.”

  “Jean-Luc, what is it?” Beverly looked at him, then back at the screen. “What do you see?”

  “Someone . . . I thought I knew,” he said.

  * * *

  By the time he reached the bridge, Worf had taken them to Yellow Alert. Picard strode to the captain’s chair but did not sit. His first officer was conferring with his chief engineer at one of the support consoles.

  “Captain,” said La Forge. “The Cam will enter the gravimetric distortion zone around the nexus in three minutes. Once the runabout passes that point, there’s no way we’ll be able to haul it back out.”

  “Options, Number One?” Picard shot Worf a questioning look.

  “We cannot tractor the Cam, but it may be possible to disable it. A phaser strike could knock out the power core.”

  “But if you’re off by a fraction of a degree, you’ll open the hull to space!” Without waiting to be asked, Lieutenant T’Ryssa Chen offered her opinion. “Sir, the flight path of the runabout is somewhat erratic. I’d say that indicates the pilot on board is inexperienced . . . and unpredictable.”

  Worf saw something in Picard’s eyes and his lips thinned. “Sir. Do you know who is on board that craft?”

  Picard nodded with regret. “The analysis of the other DNA trace shows that it bears the aftereffect of a disease. Something we’re familiar with: a virus known as Anchilles fever.”

  Worf stiffened. “The Styris IV emergency. And there is only one Styrisian assigned to the Newton.”

  “Doctor Kolb?” From her console, Lieutenant Elfiki shot a glance at the main viewscreen and the receding image of the Cam. “Kolb sabotaged the Newton?”

  “I fear so.” Picard sighed. “He was adamant that Captain Bryant’s plans to disperse the nexus were wrong, but I never suspected he would do something like this. It must all be some misguided attempt by him to preserve the phenomenon.”

  “I don’t understand,” said La Forge. “Kolb was standing ten feet away from Commander Rhonu when we beamed onto the Newton’s bridge. Why didn’t she sense his thoughts?”

  “Styrisian brain structure is resistant to telepathic resonance,” noted Elfiki. “No Betazoid could read him.”

  “When he realized we were close to finding out the truth, he fled the ship.” Worf went to the tactical console. “Captain, you must let me take the shot. We cannot allow him to enter the energy ribbon.”

  Picard let the request hang. “Lieutenant Chen, hail the Cam. I want to talk to him.”

  She worked her console. “No response, Captain.”

  “What about the runabout’s prefix code?”

  Chen shook her head. “It has already been scrambled, sir. He probably did it before he took off.”

  “Why is Kolb doing this?” said Faur, at the conn. “The Cam will be ripped apart when it gets too close to the ribbon.”

  “No, it won’t,” noted La Forge. “Kolb has reformulated the shield modulations to resist the temporal flux of the nexus, at least for a short time.” He hesitated, then turned to Picard. “Sir, there is one other option. The altered shield pattern has a microsecond emission-cycle drop when the deflectors are at their weakest. It might be enough to punch through with a matter stream.”

  “You can transport Kolb out?”

  La Forge shook his head. “No, the scattering field won’t allow it. But I think we could beam something onto the Cam.”

  “A canister of anesthezine gas.” Worf’s answer was immediate. “We could render him unconscious.”

  “Which would leave us with an unpiloted, out-of-control runabout on a collision course with a volatile space-time anomaly.” Picard shook his head, making the decision even before it had fully formed in his thoughts. “There’s another approach we can try.”

  “No.” The word slipped out of Worf’s lips before his captain could say anymore. “Your courage is admirable, sir, but if any member of the crew is to attempt that transport, it must be me.”

  “Oh?” Picard arched his eyebrow. “Mister Worf, the last officer I called Number One also tried that argument on me, and it didn’t take then. It won’t take now.”

  Worf drew a small type-1 phaser from a hidden pocket on his belt. “I can beam aboard the Cam, neutralize Kolb, and regain control of the runabout.” He drew himself up. “I remind you, si
r, this man has already killed. He must be considered dangerous.”

  Picard’s manner sharpened. “I know him, Commander. Kolb is not a murderer!”

  “Correction, sir,” said Worf. “You knew him.”

  “Our window of opportunity is closing fast.” La Forge broke in, gesturing at his console. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right now.”

  “I’m going, Number One,” said Picard, and his eyes were as hard as flint. “That’s an order.”

  On a Klingon ship, Worf might have coldcocked a captain who made such a risky choice and gone on anyway; but Jean-Luc Picard was no fool, and he was never reckless. He would not have said the words if he did not believe he could stop the errant scientist. “Very well, sir.” Worf held out the phaser. “Take this.”

  “I won’t need it. That man is a friend of mine.”

  “Are you certain?”

  His question cut Picard deeply, and after a moment of hesitation, the captain reached out and took the weapon. “Mister La Forge,” he called. “Initiate a site-to-site transport. Energize when ready.”

  “Here we go,” said La Forge, as he bent over his panel. “It may be a little . . . bumpy.”

  “You have the bridge, Number One—”

  Picard’s words were stolen away as he disappeared into a column of blue-white light.

  * * *

  Jean-Luc Picard had traveled by transporter so many times in his life that he had lost count. From ship to surface, from place to place, using Federation systems or those of a dozen other races, he was far beyond the point of experiencing any novelty to it. The crawl of energy over his skin, the peculiar displacement in those fleeting moments of true dissipation before his molecules were reassembled in a new location; he paid them no mind. It was almost unconscious on his part.

  But this was different. In some way, he was more aware of the action of beaming away from the Enterprise and across the vacuum to the speeding target of the Cam. Picard’s last sight of the bridge—and of Worf’s worried scowl as the transporter effect took hold—seemed to shimmer and fade, becoming a torrent of sparkling energy that washed over him, around him, through him.