by David Mack
“I need to ensure my House’s rise within the Empire.”
Hostility shone in her dark eyes, betraying her waning patience. “Be specific.”
He stepped past her to the bed and ran his finger along the hard, smooth slab, which was surprisingly clean, considering its surroundings. “If an accident were to befall Chancellor Sturka, it could pave the way for my family’s advancement inside the High Council.”
Valina crossed her arms. “An accident? Or an assassination?”
“Let’s not quibble over semantics.”
His glib deflection of her query was met by a hard stare. “The Tal Shiar won’t do your dirty work for you. If you want Sturka dead, have the spine to do it yourself.”
Duras noted the undercurrent of pride in Valina’s voice as she’d said “Tal Shiar,” and he made two immediate mental connections. First, he inferred from the context that it was likely a proper name for the Romulan Star Empire’s military intelligence apparatus, or at least a part of it; second, he surmised that Valina was likely an undercover operative for the organization.
Both useful things to know.
He expunged all aggression from his voice. “In that case, what can you do for me?”
“I can give you what you really came for.” She flashed an arrogant smirk. “Did you actually think you were being crafty? By asking for something you knew I’d refuse, just to make the thing you really wanted seem reasonable by comparison? If you plan on making a career of lies and deception, you need to work on your conversational tactics.” She reached over to a stack of rough towels in the corner by the bed, plucked out the one second from the bottom, and unfolded it to reveal a concealed data card. “It contains all the technical information your House will need to figure out why your attempts to convert our cloaking devices to your ships haven’t been working—and how to fix it. With control over this vital tactical asset, the House of Duras can rise in stature through its public actions, and earn the thanks and praise of the Empire.”
Duras reached for the card on the towel, but Valina pulled it back and tsk-tsked at him. “You first, my love.”
He held up his card of stolen data in two fingers. “Both at the same time.” He waited for her to mimic his pose. “On three. One. Two. Three.” Their hands struck like serpents, each of them seizing their prize before the other decided to renege on the deal. Then they stood, facing each other, and smiled. “Well,” Duras said, “now that that’s over. . . .”
They flung the cards aside, and then Valina tackled him to the floor, where Duras found what he had really come for in the first place.
4
Master Chief Petty Officer Mike Ilucci leaned forward—his hands on his knees, sweat running in steady streams from beneath his uncombed black hair, nausea twisting in his gut—and groaned.
Even though Ilucci had been careful to moderate his drinking in recent weeks, since technically the Sagittarius crew was not on leave but rather awaiting an opportunity to ship out, he had not been so careful in his choice of cuisines, and his epicurean tendencies seemed to have finally caught up with him. He couldn’t say whether the culprit responsible for his current gastrointestinal distress was the highly acidic Pacifican ceviche on which he’d gorged himself the night before, the overly spicy eggs Benedict with chipotle hollandaise sauce over Tabasco-marinated skirt steak he’d enjoyed for breakfast, or the huge portion of obscenely rich linguine carbonara he’d devoured for lunch that afternoon. Or perhaps some combination of the three.
It didn’t matter, he decided. Hot swirling pain moved through his gut, and it hurt so badly that he imagined he must have swallowed a plasma drill set on overdrive. All he wanted at that moment was a few minutes of peace to let the agony subside.
A moving shadow intruded upon his view of the deck, and then he saw the feet that trailed behind it. From above his bowed head, he heard the familiar voice of enlisted engineer Crewman Torvin. “You all right, Master Chief?”
Grotesque discomfort put an edge on Ilucci’s reply. “Do I look all right, Tor?”
The young Tiburonian sounded nervous and concerned. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Yeah. Kill me.”
Torvin shuffled his feet, apparently at a loss for a reply. “Um . . .”
“What do you need, Tor?”
The lean, boyish engineer doubled over so he could look Ilucci in the eye. His voice cracked as if he were suffering a relapse of puberty. “Before I kill you, can I get you to sign off on the repulsor grid?”
A tired moan and a grudging nod. “Help me up.”
With one hand pushing against Ilucci’s shoulder and the other hovering behind the husky chief engineer’s back, Torvin guided Ilucci back to an upright stance. The chief cleared his throat and lumbered across the main cargo hold of the civilian superfreighter S.S. Ephialtes, with Torvin a few steps ahead of him. Above and around them, teams of engineers and starship repair crews from Vanguard worked under the direction of Ilucci’s engineers, installing a host of new systems inside the freighter’s recently emptied, titanic main cargo hold. Several decks had been torn out, along with most of the ship’s cargo-handling machinery, such as cranes and hoists. The result was a vast, oblong cavity that accounted for the center third of the ship’s interior volume.
Torvin led Ilucci to the center of the deck, where he had installed a gray metal hexagonal platform that stood just over a meter tall and measured two meters on each side. The top of the platform was festooned with an array of smaller hexagons composed of a dark, glasslike substance. The enlisted man lifted a tricorder that he wore slung at his hip, keyed in a command, and powered up the repulsor grid. An ominous low hum filled the air for a moment, and then it faded to a barely audible purr. Shrugging out from under the tricorder’s strap, Torvin handed the device to Ilucci. “I set the amplitude, frequency, and angles according to your specs.” He pointed around the cavernous hold at five other devices: one on the overhead and one on each of the four main bulkheads—forward, aft, port, and starboard. “The load’s balanced on a six-point axis, has two redundant fail-safes, and can support five times the mass of the Sagittarius.”
Ilucci scrolled through the benchmark tests Torvin had run, then nodded. “Nice work, but if this tub drops too fast from warp to impulse we could plow right through its forward bulkhead and end up as a hood ornament.” He shut off the tricorder and handed it back to Torvin. “Do me a favor: hop back to the salvage bay and bring back some more inertial dampers.”
“Just me?” Torvin fidgeted and looked over his shoulder.
“Yeah, just you.” He paused and eyed his flummoxed engineer. “Why? What’s the problem? Afraid you’ll get lost?”
The youth palmed the sweat from his shaved head and absent-mindedly tugged on one of his oversized, finlike Tiburonian earlobes. “No, I, um . . .” He took a breath and calmed himself. “I don’t think the civvies on this ship are too thrilled about us ripping up their hold.”
The chief couldn’t suppress a sympathetic frown. “I wouldn’t be, either, if I was them.” Noting the fearful look on Torvin’s face, he lowered his voice. “Did someone threaten you?”
“Let’s just say I think it might be a good idea if we moved in pairs for a while.”
He gave Torvin a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Noted.” Then he turned and waved to get the attention of the Sagittarius’s senior engineer’s mate, Petty Officer First Class Salagho Threx. The hulking, hirsute Denobulan nodded back, then crossed the cargo hold at an awkward jog until he joined Torvin and Ilucci, both of whom he dwarfed with ease. “Yeah, Chief?”
“Tor says the civvies have a bug up their collective ass about us gutting their boat, and he thinks they might be looking for a bit of payback on any Starfleet folks they catch alone in the passageways between here and the station.”
Threx looked unsurprised. “I get the same feeling, Master Chief.”
“Okay. Go with Tor and get a pallet of inertial dampers to beef up this repulsor grid.
And if any of those grease monkeys start some shit, you have my permission to kick their asses.”
“Copy that, Master Chief.” The bearded giant of a Denobulan beckoned Torvin with a tilt of his head. “Let’s roll.” The two engineers walked toward the exit, both keeping their heads on swivels, looking out for trouble from whatever direction it might come.
Ilucci turned, hoping he might slip away to some dark corner of the freighter to collapse into a coma until his stomach cramps abated, but instead found himself face-to-face with another of his engineers, Petty Officer Second Class Karen Cahow. The short, indefatigable tomboy had grease on her standard-issue olive-green jumpsuit and grime in her dark blond hair, but she looked ecstatically happy. “I figured out how to mask us from sensors in transit!”
The bedraggled chief engineer tried to shuffle past her. “Good job. I’ll put your name in for a medal.” His escape was halted by her hand grasping the upper half of his rolled-up sleeve.
“Don’t you want to hear how I did it?”
Overcoming his urge to retch, he turned and smiled. “Are you sure it works?”
Her face was bright with pride. “Positive.”
“Then I’ll look forward to reading your report.” The perky polymath started to protest, so he cut her off. “Later. Capisce?”
His urgency seemed to drive the point home for her. “Got it.”
“Good. Now go make sure this boat’s ventral doors are rigged for rapid deployment. And if you need me, just follow the stench till you find my shallow grave.”
“Will do, Master Chief.” Cahow bounded away, a bundle of energy so infused with optimism that it made Ilucci want to drink himself stupid and spend a week asleep.
He made it to the cargo hold’s exit, where he collided with the first officer of the Sagittarius, Commander Clark Terrell. The lanky, brown-skinned XO had the muscled physique of a prizefighter and the razor-sharp, lightning-quick intellect of a scientist.
Probably because he’s both, Ilucci mused. During their years of service together on the Sagittarius, he’d learned that Terrell, in addition to having double-specialized in xenobiology and impulse propulsion systems, had been one of the stars of the Starfleet Academy boxing team.
Terrell cracked a brilliantly white grin. “How goes it, Master Chief?”
“By the numbers, sir. We’ll be ready to vent the hold and move our boat in here by 0300 tomorrow.” He rapped one knuckle against the top of his head. “Knock on wood.”
“Outstanding, Chief.” He studied Ilucci with a critical eye. “Are you all right?”
Ilucci swallowed hard, forcing a surge of sour bile back whence it came. “Nothing a year in the tropics wouldn’t fix, sir.” Eager to change the subject, he glanced upward and asked, “How’s Captain Alodae taking the news?”
The query drew a snort and a chortle from the commander, who shook his head in glum amusement. “Let’s just say I’m glad I’m down here with you right now.”
“That well, huh?”
“Master Chief, you don’t even want to know.”
Nogura stood his ground as Captain Alodae jabbed him in the chest with his index finger and raged, “I’m not signing anything! You people have no right to take my ship or my cargo!”
The thick-middled, heavily jowled Rigelian drew his hand back to poke Nogura a second time, only to find his wrist seized mid-thrust by the cobralike grab of T’Prynn, whose gaze was as fearsomely cold as her voice. “Control yourself, Captain.”
Watching from just beyond arm’s reach, the other officers at the meeting—Captain Adelard Nassir of the Sagittarius and Lieutenant Commander Holly Moyer from Vanguard’s office of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General, or JAG—tensed in anticipation of violence.
Alodae retreated half a step from Nogura and jerked his hand free of T’Prynn’s grip. A flurry of emotions distorted his tattooed face, then his nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath. Features still crinkled with anger, he bowed his head to Nogura. “My apologies, Admiral.”
Nogura replied with curt formality, “Apology accepted, Captain.”
Though he was obviously still furious, Alodae reined in his temper enough to lower his voice to just less than a shout. “My point stands. This is a violation of my rights, as well as the rights of my crew, passengers, and employer. You can’t just press us into service and use us any way you like. The Federation has laws against this kind of thing.”
“Very true,” Nogura said. “Unfortunately, we’re not inside the Federation.”
Looking as if he’d just been slapped with a dead fish, Alodae stammered, “Huh—what?”
Moyer stepped in from the conversational sideline. “I’m afraid that’s technically correct, Captain.” The svelte redhead flinched slightly as the fuming Rigelian turned his ire toward her, but she rallied her confidence and continued. “Despite the presence of Starbase 47 as a hub for colonization, commerce, and exploration, formal jurisdiction over this sector remains in dispute. And because this is a Starfleet facility rather than a civilian one, the only law in effect here is the Starfleet Code of Military Justice, which does, in fact, authorize us to commandeer vessels and personnel when required to defend Federation security.” She handed Alodae a data slate.
He glanced at it, then at the Starfleet officers surrounding him. “What if I refuse and tell you to get your people off my ship so we can leave?”
Nogura shrugged. “Then we’d continue this discussion in the brig.”
Moyer added, “You and your crew would be placed under arrest, and Starfleet would impound your vessel. Then we’d issue your ship a military registration, crew it with our own people, and proceed with the operation we’ve already described to you.”
The Rigelian merchant captain’s visage was a taut mask of contempt. “I see. So, that’s it? You hijack my ship and my crew, and we just have to roll over and take it?”
“Well, Starfleet would compensate your employer for the ship, if it came to that,” Moyer said. “Also, you and your crew and passengers would be provided with transport to the nearest Federation port of call and given vouchers for whatever destinations you choose beyond that.”
Alodae narrowed his eyes. “How generous of you.”
“However,” T’Prynn cut in, “if you comply with our requests, you would nominally retain command of your vessel, and after the Sagittarius separates from yours at the Iremal Cluster, you would be free to continue on your way.”
Swiveling his head toward the Vulcan, Alodae asked, “And what about my lost profits, Lieutenant? An empty ship might use less fuel than a full one, but flying empty also burns up time and money. Our margins were razor thin before you folks forced us to do charity work.”
Nogura traded a look with Moyer, then he said to Alodae, “If it’s purely a matter of remuneration, I’m sure we can negotiate a fair settlement.”
“I’ll take you up on that, but it’s not just about the money.” Alodae aimed his ire at Nassir. “If I use my ship to sneak yours away from this station, that puts my ship and crew at risk. We’d stop being civilians and become legitimate military targets.”
The short, bald, and slightly built Deltan starship captain projected placidity as he answered the beefy Rigelian. “Respectfully, Captain, you and your ship are already targets, every time you cross the Federation border into the Taurus Reach. The Klingons and the Tholians don’t care about the legal niceties of your ship’s status. If they decide to board you or blow you to kingdom come, they will. The only difference between this trip and any other you’ve made in this sector is that, this time, Starfleet will be watching over you every step of the way.”
Alodae surrendered to the inevitable. “Fine. Do what you want. But you’d better believe I plan to lodge a formal complaint with the Federation Council after I get my ship home.”
“We would expect nothing less,” said Nogura.
The Rigelian frowned at Moyer. “Let’s go set a price for this little adventure of yours.”
A
s the JAG officer turned to lead Alodae out of Nogura’s office, Nassir took half a step toward the man. “Captain, I just want to thank you on behalf of—”
“Blow it out your ass,” Alodae groused. “And tell your crew that once we’re on our way, I don’t want to see you or any of them inside my ship.”
Nassir mustered a polite smile. “You won’t even know we’re there.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Alodae turned and motioned for Moyer to continue, and the two of them left the office. The hum of activity from the operations center briefly filtered in through the open doorway as they made their exit, then the door hushed closed, and silence reigned inside the admiral’s sanctum.
“Well,” Nassir said to no one in particular, “that went better than I expected.”
Nogura walked to his desk and sat down. “Alodae says he’ll cooperate, but I don’t trust him. He’s willful. And proud.” He steepled his fingers while he considered the situation, and Nassir and T’Prynn waited quietly for him to continue. Then he made up his mind, pressed his palms on the desktop, and pushed himself back to his feet as he looked at Nassir. “Have your chief engineer make sure your bridge crew controls the cargo hold doors on the Ephialtes. I don’t want Alodae or his crew ejecting your ship without permission.”
“Yes, sir.”
He shifted his gaze to T’Prynn. “Post a security team on the Ephialtes to make sure its crew don’t do anything to jeopardize the mission.”
“Understood, Admiral. What rationale shall I give Captain Alodae for their presence?”
Nogura stroked his chin. “Tell him they’re just passengers, heading home now that they’ve finished their tours of duty. And add their fares to his compensation package.”
“Very good. Shall I book them in the first-class cabins?” She noted the incredulous stares of both Nogura and Nassir, then arched one brow in sardonic understanding. “No, of course not. Such generosity by Starfleet would be certain to draw suspicion. Steerage it is, then.”