by Andy Mangels
Shran strode angrily toward the door, then turned back around to regard the room from the open doorway. “You worry about what you risk by pursuing the Orions.” His voice sounded as cold as Andoria’s northern wastes. “But be certain that you alsoconcern yourself with the danger to the Coalition of Planets should you choose to ignore what I’ve told you.”
Shran stormed out of the captain’s mess, with Theras following meekly behind him.
Archer felt himself shudder involuntarily. Shran’s final comment could be interpreted either as a warning about the Romulans or as a threat from Shran himself.
He had no doubt that the passionate Andorian, even though stripped of both his rank and his ship, could indeed be quite a formidable foe….
Seven
The early twenty-fifth century
Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana
JAKE SISKO REACHED FORWARD with his right hand, tapping a symbol on one of the pair of padds sitting next to each other on the desk. They had already paused the other moments ago. Nog had brought both of the devices with him, since they had sizable holo-imagers built into them. The effect was like having simultaneous mini-holodecks running side by side, like bizarre living doll-houses. Except this time, though the story began the same for both, the divergences were notable.
He turned toward Nog. “Okay, this is weird. Not alternate universe weird, but it’s not adding up right.”
Nog nodded, his mouth full after taking a hefty gulp of his wine. Swallowing, he said, “I knew you’d be intrigued.”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m intrigued, or just plain troubled.”
“Well, it’s not the first time hew-mon history has gotten distorted,” Nog said. “Look at Zefram Cochrane. He’s still hailed as a great hero at the Academy, even though Troi’s memoir describes him as more of a scared, drunken genius than the larger-than-life figure everybody thinks they know.”
“Yeah, but this is morethan that,” Jake said, reaching for his glass. “Cochrane’s personalitywas one thing; we’re seeing whole sequences of history that are different from the version that just about everybody accepts.”
Jake’s stomach gurgled suddenly, and he realized that he hadn’t eaten yet. Rena often joked that if she wasn’t around, he’d starve to death and be eaten by the cat before anyone found him. “Excuse my rumbling,” he said. “I’m going to fix myself a sandwich. Do you want anything to eat?”
“What local delicacy would be good with a pinot noir?” Nog thought for a moment, then grinned. “Do you have any fresh nutria?”
Jake blanched. “Ugh! Not unless you want to go out in the bayou and try to catch them. I can replicate you some, if you really have your heart set on it.”
“Won’t taste quite the same as the wild version, but I suppose it’ll have to do,” Nog said, his shoulders drooping in mock resignation.
Jake stood up and began walking toward the kitchen, rolling his shoulder to try to work a kink out of it. “You know, Nietzsche said, ‘History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant amount of what we think we know to be true in our own histories could be represented completely differently two hundred years from now.”
He unwrapped a loaf of bread and sliced two pieces from it with a serrated knife from a wooden rack on the kitchen’s tidy counter. “I remember Dad once telling me about the American presidents, pre-World War III. He said that history always told people that George Washington was the father of the United States, and that he had been the first president of this country. But there were actually over a dozen men that preceded him, although their powers were different and they were called ‘President of the United States in Congress Assembled.”’
Nog had followed Jake to the kitchen. “You hewmons and your territorialism. You think the history of the Grand Naguses is any different?” He smiled widely. “You should hear some of the ‘facts’ about even recenthistory I’ve been told during my visits to Ferenginar. Some of what’s being taught to my younger brother and sisters about Rom sounds almost like a fairy tale.”
“Well, you have your world, I have mine,” Jake said, slicing some salami he’d pulled from the refrigeration unit. “I knew that World War III had pretty much caused havoc with files and data back in the twenty-first century, but I don’t think—I didn’tthink that Earth’s history could have gotten so messed up since then.”
Nog picked up the salami log and sniffed at it, then wrinkled his nose as if in disgust. “This smells awful.” He took another sniff. “Why don’t you go ahead and make me a sandwich from it as well?”
Jake snorted a laugh and reached for the loaf of bread. “So, history is being rewritten all over the place, and this is no different, is that what we’re saying?”
Nog put his hands up, protesting. “Not me. I think there’s something more to this.”
“Okay, so returning to the mystery at hand, the accepted holoprogram of 2161 says that Shran was a military hero who disgraced himself in private business and had to fake his own death,” Jake said as he continued cutting the sandwich fixings. “And that he had a five-year-old daughter with Jhamel, whom he had met in 2154, and that it was their daughter that was kidnapped. The new holoprogram, that is reported to be from data recorded in 2155, says that Shran was disgraced due to the destruction of his ship, wasn’t even one of Jhamel’s bondmates, and therefore had produced no children with her, and reports that Jhamelwas actually the one who got kidnapped.”
Nog nodded, watching Jake cut the salami. “I don’t think Shran is the real focus of this mystery, though. I think it’s Commander Tucker. More of the foul-smelling meat, please?”
Jake looked at his friend and affected a perplexed expression. “Commander Tucker has exactly whatto do with foul meat? Oh, you want more on your sandwich.” He gamely sliced off a few more pieces, then began assembling the sandwiches with a graceful economy of movement he’d picked up over the years he’d spent working in his grandfather Joseph’s restaurant in New Orleans. “ Thanksfor spoiling the surprise for me, Nog. You, of course, have seenall this already, so you know what’s coming.”
Nog shook his head. “Actually, I haven’t seen all of it yet. But I didwatch and read through enough of it to get the basic gist before I decided to journey out here to see you.”
Jake cut the sandwiches in half, then slid the knife under them and transferred them to small plates. He handed one to Nog. “Here. Feed yourself, and don’tspoil any more surprises for me.”
“So, you don’t want to hear about the—”
Jake put a hand up over Nog’s mouth, and glared at him sternly. “ No.I’ve already gotten my history through one filter, and now I’m seeing it through another. I don’t need to hear yet another version through the Nog-filter.”
He picked up his plate and his wineglass and padded toward the desk, a similarly encumbered Nog trailing after him.
“Boy, you can be as grumpy as your dad sometimes,” Nog said, almost under his breath.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said, sitting down in his comfortable writing chair and setting his sandwich to the side. His hand trembled slightly as he moved to activate the padds again.
“Now hush up, and let’s see what comes next.”
Eight
Day Twenty-One, Month of Tasmeen
Somewhere in Romulan space
DOCTOR EHREHIN WAS AWAKENED in the semidarkness by a hard jolt of confusion. He was unsure for the moment exactly where he was as he rose slowly in his bed, his back protesting as he moved carefully to a sitting position.
“Cunaehr?” he called out, then listened attentively to the silence that answered.
At length he rose from the bed and cinched his robe tightly about his slight frame, tiny lightning bolts of pain assaulting his lower spine. Ignoring the familiar discomfort, he padded barefoot across the thick white carpet toward the heavy curtains that lined the richly appointed bedroom’s wide tr
ansparisteel window. He pulled on the sash, letting in the wan of light of the dawn that was just beginning to tease the horizon of this arid, relatively undeveloped planet.
Then, all in rush, he remembered where he was: safely ensconced inside one of the secret government villas on Nelvana III. It was the same place in which he had awakened with a quite similar jolt of confusion every morning since the drive-test mishap at the Unroth facility. He was beginning to believe that he would continue to arise each daybreak in temporary bewilderment, at least until such time as his project support people finally finished putting right the Unroth mess, so that the various tests and analyses could begin to go forward again.
Perhaps that time would arrive soon, since at the moment he truthfully could not recall just how many confusing mornings had passed since the Romulan military had brought him to Nelvana to recuperate in this isolated if luxurious estate.
“Cunaehr?” Ehrehin repeated, after turning away from the window to face the door at the broad bedroom’s opposite side. Still no one answered. Perhaps none of the staff had risen as yet. But that didn’t explain the lack of response of his bodyguards.
“Cunaehr?” Cunaehr, his beloved favorite student and assistant, would never have abandoned him this way.
Ehrehin stopped short, recalling in a sudden wash of grief that Cunaehr would never answer him again. If that reallywas Cunaehr I saw with his head smashed in back at the lab on Unroth,he thought.
He raised a withered hand to a throbbing temple. Why was everything becoming so damned confusing?
Ehrehin was startled out of his musings by a noise that seemed to come from the still dimly lit hallway in front of him. A footfall?
Breakfast, perhaps,he thought, suddenly eager to get on with his normal activities.
He crossed the room quietly and entered the plushly carpeted hallway.
And realized with a start that a pair of large, dark-clad figures stood in his way. Behind them an indistinct figure lay slumped between the carpeted hallway and the tile floor of one of the villa’s kitchens.
Ehrehin scowled as he looked over each of the men. “You’re not Cunaehr,” he said finally, addressing them both. “Have you come to bring my breakfast?” It was only then that he noticed that neither man carried a tray, cups, or any other food-related accoutrements.
The man on the left raised a dark, blunt shape that Ehrehin recognized as a military-issue disruptor pistol, after spending a brief beat puzzling over it. The other man carried one as well.
“Are you my new bodyguard detachment?” Ehrehin said.
“Yes,” said the man on the right after an awkward pause. “Yes, we are.”
Ehrehin took a cautious step backward, but froze when the man on the left brandished his weapon in a menacing fashion.
“Get dressed quickly and quietly, Doctor,” he said. “You are coming with us.”
When Subcommander D’tran entered Valdore’s office, the admiral presumed that he had come to convey the next in D’tran’s series of dierha-by- dierhaintelligence updates. Then Valdore spared a quick glance at the wall chronometer that overlooked the desk behind which he had spent so much of his working life. The admiral saw at once that the other man had actually turned up nearly a quarter- dierhaearly.
And from the look on the middle-aged subcommander’s pale, lined face, he had come bearing tidings that he wasn’t eager to impart.
“Report, Subcommander,” Valdore snapped, having no patience with such stalling. “Just tell me what’s gone wrong.”
D’tran took a deep breath. “It’s Doctor Ehrehin, Admiral. We have…lost him, sir.”
Valdore instantly could see every tactical timetable that he had constructed since his release from imprisonment crashing like an incoming meteor. He rose to his feet, pushing his desk chair toward the weapons-lined wall several long paces behind him. He leaned forward across the desktop, planting both of his muscular arms on the sherawood surface to support himself. “Do you mean to tell me the doctor has died,Subcommander?”
Somehow, the cowering subcommander avoided taking a step backward. “No, sir. At least, not that we can determine for certain. But I have just confirmed that Ehrehin has been taken from his secure compound, apparently by members of a Romulan dissident group. We are not entirely certain as yet which group is responsible, since no one has spoken up to take ‘credit’ for this crime.”
Evidently it was an unusuallycompetent dissident group,Valdore thought as he released a frustrated sigh. Who knew how far this could set back the development schedule for the new stardrive?
Aloud, he said, “Get me the officers directly responsible for safeguarding Doctor Ehrehin. And see to it that his captors are tracked down. Spare absolutely noeffort, Subcommander.”
“At once,” said D’tran, who appeared more than eager to leave Valdore’s presence and set about his urgent tasks. “May I take my leave of you, sir?”
Another thought suddenly occurred to Valdore. “Wait,” he said, and paused just long enough to let the subcommander realize that another order was forthcoming. “What is the status of the Aenar slaves the Adigeons are brokering for us?”
D’tran regarded him with a somewhat curious expression. “Still en route to our intermediaries on Adigeon Prime, sir.”
“But stillno firm estimated time of arrival?” This was another matter that Valdore was finding increasingly vexing. “What is causing these continual delays?”
“Our intermediaries are blaming the Orions, sir. They are evidently the procurers whom the Adigeons have retained to acquire the…commodity in question. And the Orions seem to be making numerous other stops and connections on their way to the delivery point for our cargo.”
“I now need those telepaths sooner rather than later, Subcommander,” Valdore said in a low growl. “They could well turn out to be our only hope of tracking down Ehrehin and his captors.” The time had come to take a few drastic measures.
“Subcommander,” Valdore continued, “I want you to explain to our ‘esteemed intermediaries’ on Adigeon that their continued safe passage through Romulan space depends greatly upon my continued patience and goodwill. And have them expedite the arrival of those telepaths any way they can.”
“Immediately, sir,” the subcommander said, then snapped off a smart salute and exited the office.
Valdore stood alone in the room for a protracted moment, then walked to the wall at the rear of his office where he kept his many edged weapons on display, now that he had retrieved them from the locker where they had been so haphazardly stored during his long confinement. With care and reverence, he took down his dathe’anofv-sen—his Honor Blade—which gleamed brightly again now that he had finally found the time to remove the faint patina of tarnish it had picked up in the dank, subterranean storage room. He placed the blade and its scabbard carefully on his uniform belt, straightened his posture, then exited the office to report the latest developments to T’Leikha.
He wondered how much more would be permitted to go wrong before the First Consul required him to allow the Honor Blade to drink deep of his lifeblood.
Nine
Sunday, February 9, 2155
EnterpriseNX-01
THE SILVER-HAIRED EMINENCE stared impassively from across the approximately sixteen light-years that separated him from Archer’s ready room aboard Enterprise.
“That’s essentially what happened, sir,” Archer said to Admiral Sam Gardner. “Based, of course, on what Shran and Theras told us.”
His tie slightly askew, the admiral folded his arms in front of himself, displaying the heavily braided sleeves on his dark uniform jacket. “Captain, it sounds to me that you aren’t entirely convinced by Commander Shran’s assertion that the Orion slavers’ action against the Aenar represents a prelude to a large-scale Romulan military incursion.”
Seated behind the cramped ready room’s small desk, Archer continued to stare straight into his computer monitor, despite the distraction of his chief engineer’s fidget
ing; Trip was standing just inside the admiral’s line of sight, alongside a far more tranquil, but no less serious-visaged T’Pol. Trip had already made it clear that he vehemently agreed with Shran’s assessment, and Archer couldn’t fault him for that, so long as he maintained respect for the chain of command. And, truth be told, Archer felt no small amount of guilt for allowing his upcoming diplomatic duties to keep him from simply rushing into the breach on Shran’s behalf.
Whether or not the Romulans really are about to attack us, Shran is definitely right about at least one thing,Archer thought. Ido owe him.After all, he hadn’t forgotten the rescue on Coridan, or the Andorian’s invaluable help against both the Xindi and the Romulans, or Shran’s admirable restraint when V’Las had tried to start a Vulcan-Andorian war.
On top of all that, Archer still felt a small pang of regret for having sliced off one of Shran’s antennae with an Ushaanblade. The incident had occurred at the time of last November’s Babel conference and the previous Romulan crisis—so recently, in fact, that Shran’s missing antenna had still only partially grown back. Though he knew that the truncated antenna would probably finish regenerating itself within another month or two, Archer would always suspect that the humiliation associated with the loss would take a good deal longer to heal.
Archer nodded tentatively toward Gardner’s image. “Let’s just say I’m…concerned, Admiral. I think that Starfleet should investigate the matter as thoroughly as possible, if there’s any chance at all that Shran may be right—”
“Captain,”the admiral said, interrupting. “Neither Starfleet nor Earth’s government—all the way up to Minister al-Rashid, and even Nathan Samuels himself—can afford to risk sending the fleet’s flagship off on what could very well turn into a lengthy and distracting snipe hunt. Not with the Coalition Compact signing ceremonies coming up so soon. Andcertainly not on the basis of such inconclusive evidence.”