by Shards
Despite knowing that the devices were not even remotely Romulan in origin, and that the general was ordering him to waste his time, Gowron replied, "Yes, sir."
Duras opened the door and left the room. Gowron stayed close behind him as they walked back toward the holding cell where the general was holding the new human prisoner. "I'll let you know if the half-breed tells us anything interesting once we get her in the mind-sifter."
The general glanced sideways at Gowron while they walked. "Finish analyzing her equipment first," he said. "The more you learn on your own before you put her in the machine, the better you can target your questions, while she's still lucid enough to answer them."
"Yes, General," Gowron said, acquiescing to yet another squandering of his time and effort. They returned to the door flanked by the two brutes. "How goes your own interrogation?"
Turning back to face him, Duras said, "When there's a reason for you to know, I'll tell you. Dismissed."
Gowron bowed his head and slipped away. He heard the cell door slide open and shut behind him as the general retreated once more into seclusion. Whoever that prisoner is, she knows something vital, he concluded. And the half-breed must know what it is-which is why he stalled my interrogation.
It wasn't paranoia that made Gowron suspect the general was gathering intelligence for a new power grab.
It was common sense.
Barclay had helped K'Ehleyr put on her stealth suit countless times, but until now, he'd never had to don one himself. It was harder to do alone than he'd thought.
Fifteen years I've been a tac-support guy, he reflected, while struggling to attach various high-tech gadgets to the spare suit's equipment belt. Fifteen years of sitting in the ship and pushing buttons. He snapped on a packet of incendiary microrobotic munitions, which he and K'Ehleyr called "spiders." What am I doing? I'm no field agent. I must be out of my mind.
He checked the setting on his disruptor and calmed himself. It wasn't that he'd never been trained for field ops, but what experience he'd had was minimal and a long time ago. He couldn't be certain how much of his old instruction would come back to him when he needed it.
Standard procedure in a situation such as this was for him to do exactly what K'Ehleyr had told him to do, before her vitals tanked: abort the mission, and bug out. But there was nothing standard about this mess; too much was at stake for him simply to walk away.
Of course, Barclay might have done exactly that, anyway, and sought out a remote corner of the galaxy in which to hide himself, except for one thing: K'Ehleyr was still alive and in the hands of the enemy.
The coward in him wanted to retreat and call in a team to replace himself and K'Ehleyr. Some nobler spark of his nature refused to let him run. I can't leave her, he told himself.
In all the years they had worked together, he had never told K'Ehleyr how much he admired her, desired her, adored her as a woman and a heroine of Spock's movement. K'Ehleyr had never been one for sentimental declarations, and so no time had ever felt right for Barclay to bare his feelings. Though he knew his hope was irrational, he wondered if saving her life might one day give him a chance to confess his heart.
Focus, he reminded himself. Live through today before you start daydreaming about tomorrow.
He pulled on the stealth suit's snug-fitting hood and put his heads-up-display visor and breathing mask in place. A tap on the control panel next to him activated the suit, and the visor snapped to life, rendering the aft cabin of the Solomon in frost-blue hues. "Solomon, do you read me?"
"Yes, Reg," answered the ship's AI through Barclay's subaural transceiver, which was now online.
"Transfer control of the tac-support system to my stealth suit, and get me a lock on K'Ehleyr's transceiver."
"Done," Solomon said.
Scads of tactical data flooded across Barclay's HUD, and he made some quick changes to limit it to immediately relevant scans and alerts. "I'll need the base layout and detention-center floor plans. Highlight K'Ehleyr's position, please."
"Uploaded. Range and direction on your visor, Reg."
"Thanks," Barclay said. He reviewed the tactical situation and was not encouraged. Since K'Ehleyr's capture, the entire base had been placed on a heightened state of alert. He couldn't see any low-engagement strategies that were open to him.
Thinking of the big picture, he asked, "Any luck finding out where they put Nechayev's personal effects?"
"Not yet," Solomon said. "I'm running a new code-breaking algorithm, but I need to be careful not to trip their computer security alarms. As soon as I access the security system, I should be able to track down General Nechayev's belongings."
Barclay powered up his suit's stealth circuits. "All right," he said as he watched his reflection fade from a deactivated monitor. "Give me a heads-up as soon as you do."
"Will do, Reg. Good luck."
"Thanks," he replied, musing darkly, I'm gonna need it.
He opened the side hatch of the cloaked ship and descended the ramp into the slashing rain and wind. Watching water pool on the Solomon's invisible hull and run off in great torrents, he was grateful that he had taken the precaution of landing a short distance from the base, out of sight behind a rocky knoll.
Turning his back on the ship, he pressed on into the stormy gloom, keenly aware that he would either return with K'Ehleyr and the master quantum transceiver or not come back at all.
It was to General Duras's credit, thought Alynna Nechayev, that he knew when to shut up and just listen.
Since returning from their conversation's earlier interruption, he had let her talk freely. His questions had been few and to the point.
In less than an hour, she had told him in broad strokes about Spock's creation of Memory Omega; the disinformation campaign of the Vulcans' telepathic sleeper agents, who were now at large throughout the Alliance; the hidden archives of information preserved from the Terran Empire (and, later, the Terran Republic); and Memory Omega's caches of high technology, which included weapons, ships, medical devices, and much more.
Through it all, Duras had paid rapt attention to Nechayev's every word. His intense gaze had never left her eyes, even as he acknowledged her statements with solemn nods.
"And since then," she continued, "we've been embedding agents in the Terran rebellion, putting them in positions to advise and assist key leaders in growing their numbers and fomenting a massive civil uprising throughout the Alliance."
She looked up to gauge the general's reaction. Duras stood with one arm tucked against his armored chest and stroked his goatee with his free hand. He let out a pensive grunt and looked away from her. Then he let his arms drop as he paced around her.
"It sounds as if Spock's plan is proceeding quite successfully," he said. "With your organization so close to victory, why turn your back on it now?"
"Because they can't win," Nechayev said.
Duras stopped in front of her and cocked a curious eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"
"It's a simple matter of numbers," Nechayev said. "The Alliance has too many, and Memory Omega has too few."
"History is rich with tales of victory against overwhelming odds," Duras said. "Numbers don't always tell the story."
Nechayev rolled her eyes. "This is no adventure tale, General. My role in the organization was strategic planning. It was my job to know what we were capable of and advise the leadership accordingly. But they don't want to listen to me."
Folding his arms, he asked, "What have you told them?"
"That the Alliance is spread out across too vast a territory and has too many redundant safeguards in its command structure. No matter how deftly we coordinate our sleeper agents, we lack the resources and manpower to bring down the Alliance's government or military."
"A grim assessment," Duras said.
She sensed that he wasn't persuaded. "Do you want to know how dire the situation really is?" He nodded for her to go on. "The reason I'm even here is that we just abandoned our primary head
quarters, because of one compromised operative."
"Was his knowledge of your operation that detailed?"
"Not enough to hurt us directly," Nechayev explained, "but our threat-assessment group decided that his capture had set in motion a series of events that would enable the Alliance to find our command center in less than a year." She shook her head and punctuated her story with a bitter chortle. "So we abandoned the safest base in the galaxy and blew it up."
Duras nodded. "A sensible precaution."
"Perhaps," Nechayev said. "But if we can't even protect our own headquarters, how are we supposed to win a war against the Alliance?"
The general's reserved smirk became a sneer. "So, rather than seek victory, you decided to surrender."
"Not surrender," Nechayev corrected him. "Change my allegiance and cast my lot with the obvious victors."
Duras stepped forward and loomed over her. "What makes you think the Alliance has any use for a traitor like you?"
"Because I'm here to help you rid the Alliance of the Terran rebellion and destroy Memory Omega."
That made him grin. "And how do you propose to do that?"
"By giving you the nail in their coffin," she said. "A device that you can use to wipe out all of Memory Omega in one swift stroke-and take the heart of the rebellion with it."
Her offer snared his attention; he was no longer grinning. He asked, "And what do you want in return?"
"Freedom and a world to rule as my own," she said.
"You ask much."
"For wiping out the only serious threat to the Alliance's power in local space? I think my terms are fair."
The general nodded. "Very well," he said. "Freedom and a world to rule. I can give you those..." He leaned down until his nose touched hers. "After you help me become regent."
Barclay had just perched at the top of the base's outer battlement, like an invisible gargoyle staring into the storm, when a stiff wind pushed him forward, off the wall.
Flailing to recover his grip, he felt himself tumbling. His hands slipped on the wet, smooth concrete, and his gloved fingers clawed wildly but found no purchase. He slid down the wall, palms pressed against it, hoping that friction would slow his fall without damaging his body suit's stealth fabric.
Impact. He slammed into a shallow puddle and rolled away from the wall. Seconds later, he came to a stop, facedown in the mud, bruised and winded.
Voices and running footfalls converged on his position. Harsh beams of light slashed through the downpour and danced over the rain-pocked ground on either side of him. Barclay remained still and listened while a pair of Klingon soldiers lingered mere meters away from him.
"Looks clear," said the first one, an older Klingon with a hoarse rasp of a voice.
The younger warrior, whose baritone was rich and strong, replied, "I know I heard something."
"Probably those scavenger birds again," the veteran said.
"It didn't sound like a bird."
Walking away, the older Klingon said, "Whatever it was, it's gone now. I'm going back to the post. If you want to stand in the rain, go ahead."
The young baritone continued to look around in frustration for a few seconds more, then he relented and followed the veteran back to someplace sheltered from the storm.
Alone once more, Barclay crawled across the muddy ground to the detention center and peeked around its corner. A new guard had been posted to walk a patrol along the north wall, where K'Ehleyr had made her ascent to the roof.
No way I can take him in hand-to-hand, Barclay admitted to himself. Not that I'm in any shape to climb to the roof, anyway. In a cautious whisper, he said, "Solomon, what's the base's security status?"
Like a voice inside his head, Solomon replied over the subaural transceiver, "All forces have been placed on a state of heightened alert. Patrols have been doubled, and sentries have been deployed to the rooftops."
He switched his visor between night-vision and thermal-vision settings. Within seconds, he had pinpointed the Klingon sentries lurking above him in the dark, on the rooftops. So much for doing this quietly, he realized.
"Solomon, show me a map of the base layout." The map appeared as a ghostly overlay of green lines and icons on his visor. "Pinpoint the command center, power generators, comm relays, and troop barracks." Yellow icons marked the locations he'd specified. "Mark those as targets," he said, detaching a pack of spiders from his belt.
Solomon asked with apprehension, "Reg, what're you doing?"
Activating the self-guided robotic munitions, Barclay grinned beneath his mask. "Making a mess," he said.
A stinging deluge of ice-cold water shocked K'Ehleyr back to consciousness. Shivering and coiled to react, she regarded her captors with a feral gleam.
The one in charge was short and slight, with crazy, bulging eyes. Behind him, looming over his shoulders, was a pair of standard-issue Klingon simpletons in matching suits of gray-black armor. One of them tossed aside an empty bucket.
"Good," the crazy one said to K'Ehleyr. "You're alive."
K'Ehleyr glanced at herself to assess her injuries and her options. She had been stripped of her stealth suit, weapons, boots, and equipment. All she had left were a loose pair of trousers and a shirt, both of which were now soaked with frigid water and clinging to her skin, leeching her body heat.
Crazy-eyes reached down and grabbed K'Ehleyr's chin. Lifting her face so he could aim his maniacal stare into her eyes, he said, "So, half-breed, what backwater rock were you born on?" K'Ehleyr shook her face from his grasp and growled. He flashed a toothy smile and continued, "Not an Alliance world, and definitely not an Imperial one. Abominations like you get drowned at birth. So, where do you come from?"
She thought of the now-destroyed hidden base at Regula, where her human mother, a Memory Omega agent, had given birth to K'Ehleyr after returning from a mission-gone-wrong in Alliance territory.
"No world you've ever heard of," K'Ehleyr said with a voice full of hate and eyes full of murder.
She looked past the three Klingons and scoped out the room. It was a typical Alliance chamber of horrors, stocked with torture devices ancient and modern, blunt and subtle. Pointed tips, sawtooth edges, and instruments glowing white with heat. Trays of hyposprays loaded with mind-breaking pharmaceuticals.
In the center of the room stood the most fearsome feature of all: a Klingon mind-sifter.
The madman slapped her face. "Pay attention," he said.
Fixing her gaze on him, she noted his rank insignia. He was a colonel. Recalling her premission briefing on the Solomon, she realized that he must be the base's executive officer. "As you wish," she said, adding with a snide note, "Gowron."
He punched her in the mouth, and she felt her bottom lip split open and spill warm blood down her chin. "You filthy whorechild! You dare speak my name?" She laughed at him. Enraged, he hit her again, snapping her head sideways and launching a stream of bloody spittle into the air.
She looked up at him and bared a facetious, bloody smile. "You hit like a petaQ, Gowron."
Gowron cocked his fist to strike again but stopped. "Who are you working for, half-breed?"
Before she could concoct an appropriately sarcastic answer, she heard Barclay's voice crackle inside her head: "K'Ehleyr, it's Reg. I have a lock on your tr-transceiver, and I'm on my way in. Hold p-position till I trigger a d-d-distraction."