“Watch yourself tonight, Little Dagger.” With that ominous declaration, the Praetor stepped forward and blended into the crowd.
At that moment, Lhiau slowly turned his head and looked directly at Jekri. He smiled, and that smile could not have been more unsettling if he had had a mouthful of pointed teeth.
Still don’t like me, eh, Little Dagger? Pity. We’re both on the same side, you know.
The voice was inside her head, every bit as mocking as if Lhiau had uttered the words aloud. Jekri did not look away. She thought of the smooth taste of Romulan ale, of Verrak’s strong body, of the little mind-puzzles that sometimes absorbed her whole attention. She thought of everything but how much she disliked and distrusted Lhiau.
His beautiful features were marred by a slight frown for a moment. Got you, Jekri thought before she could censor it.
For a moment only, Little Dagger. For a moment only.
The sweet jangling sound of the ritual summoning bell broke the link. It was time to head into the feast hall for dinner. Jekri summoned her strength, did her utmost to mask her thoughts, and entered with the others.
The Romulans were proud of their heritage. Most important buildings were models of efficiency, contemporary sites with up-to-the-minute technology and comforts. Only the palace remained as a monument to the past, though even its trappings of bygone eras were essentially a facade. There were torches, hearth fires, and candles, but the room was climate controlled, and there were alternative forms of lighting available. The plates and the food items they held would be sent back to the replicators after the meal. The private rooms, Jekri knew, were as contemporary as her own offices.
But the candle’s flame burned like any other, the ale was real, and the chairs and tables at which the guests seated themselves were genuine antiques.
Jekri did not care if she sat on a chair built yesterday or one on which an emperor of centuries ago had placed his royal posterior. She had not scrabbled in the dirt of the poorest province on the planet for riches and the trappings of decadence. She had done it for power, and now that power was in jeopardy.
There were name cards, another outdated and annoying tradition, and it took the assembled guests some time to find their seats. Jekri headed for the head table, her usual place. It was with a sickening feeling that she saw, next to the Empress’s center seat, not her own name but that of Lhiau. Her heart began to race as she scanned the table.
She was not even at the high table tonight.
For the briefest of moments, panic seized her. She lifted her head proudly and strode toward the nearest table, searching casually for her name.
Jekri Kaleh, Chairman of the Tal Shiar, was toward the end of the third table out of five.
It could be worse, said the voice in her head. You could be at the last table. Or not invited at all.
Perhaps I should not have come, Jekri thought coolly. I do have my business to be about, after all.
You came when called, like the fvai you are, Lhiau sent savagely. Jekri winced in pain. And you’ll bark when I tell you to.
Jekri Kaleh was no stranger to hatred, but never before—not when her body was at the mercy of thugs in the street, not when groveling before a brutal master, not when she had been forced to murder a friend to save the reputation she had so carefully crafted—had she known the white-hot, sweeping flame of hatred that swept through every cell at this moment.
She had to stop this. She had to stop Lhiau from crawling around inside her brain as if it were his right.
Jekri pulled back the chair and sat. On either side were lowly civil servants and their mates. She realized that her being at this table was causing a mild sensation, and she tried to appear calm, as if she normally sat with these—these—instead of at the left hand of the Empress.
With as much casualness as she could muster, Jekri looked toward the head table. At the center, of course, was the Empress, resplendent in a low-cut, clinging gown of diaphanous purple material. The jewels that adorned throat, ears, and hair gleamed of gold and lavender.
On her right was the Praetor, who looked perfectly at ease. Sitting in Jekri’s accustomed place, of course, was the hated Lhiau. Jekri’s lip curled in disgust as she watched him fawning over the Empress, contriving to touch her hand or shoulder, brushing a phantom lock of hair out of her eyes. What was even worse was how the Empress visibly blossomed under Lhiau’s attentiveness. Her expression grew softer, the painted green lips curling up into girlish laughter. Her eyes never seemed to leave his.
The full horror of it smote Jekri. Lhiau was seducing the Empress! Not with charm or gallantry, not if she knew him, and Jekri knew she did. He was worming his way inside the Empress’s normally keen mind. The Praetor had already told Jekri that it was Lhiau who had arranged for Jekri to attend. There could be only one reason for that.
Lhiau leaned close to the Empress and whispered something into her delicately pointed ear. She laughed, and as she pulled back from Lhiau her gaze fell upon Jekri.
At once, the full lips thinned. Her eyes narrowed.
Jekri tasted full, real fear for the first time in a long time. She hoped desperately that she would walk away from this evening’s activities still chairman of the Tal Shiar. Then she amended that hope.
Jekri Kaleh hoped she would walk away from this evening’s activities at all.
The Proconsul, seated to the Praetor’s left, rose. He lifted a goblet of blue ale. “A toast!” he cried.
There was the sound of dozens of chair legs scraping along the stone floor as those assembled rose and lifted their glasses.
“To the glorious Romulan Empire!”
Shouts of hearty agreement filled the room as everyone quaffed their ale. Jekri sipped only a little; there would be more toasts and nine courses through which to nurse this glass.
“To the Empress! The brightest star in the Empire!” the Proconsul continued. Usually these toasts were the right of the Praetor, but everyone knew how the Praetor detested public speaking and avoided it when he could.
They drank the health of the Empress, the Praetor, the Proconsul, the Senate. Everyone was about to sit down when Lhiau rose, surprising them.
“One final toast,” he said in a rich voice, lifting his goblet high. “To the absolute and total conquest of the quadrant!” He turned to the Empress. “Lady, tell them the good news.”
The Empress beamed as she rose, her gown rustling softly. “My dear, good friend Lhiau is correct,” she said, her voice carrying in the suddenly silent hall. “While we are still very much interested in retrieving the traitor Telek R’Mor and the Federation starship in the Delta Quadrant, Lhiau and I have decided that it is time to intensify the plan. We do not need to wait for Voyager to begin amassing a fleet the likes of which the Federation has never seen.”
Jekri’s eyes were glued, not to her Empress, but to Lhiau. That he felt her attention was obvious by the slight smirk that quirked his lips, but he remained focused on the Empress. The profound depth of his hypocrisy amazed Jekri. Had the man absolutely no sense of honor?
There is no honor required when dealing with kllhe, came Lhiau’s hot response.
He knew precisely what to say to anger her. Of course, he would. He was inside her mind, curse him. She licked her lips and did not respond.
“Lhiau has agreed to give us whatever we require to get our fleet ready for invasion,” the Empress continued. “Whereas before we had thirteen, soon our numbers shall be nearly uncountable. And when we do succeed in retrieving Voyager and Telek R’Mor, why then, the Federation vessel shall be our flagship. We shall discover what it was that so tragically brought down our thirteen lost warbirds. We shall see that such incidents do not recur. And when we sweep down upon an unsuspecting Federation, victory must needs be ours!”
Jekri couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Surely, logic dictated that they first determine what went wrong with the thirteen cloaked ships before placing the devices aboard an invasion fleet. Lhiau had said
something about the wormholes doing the damage; Jekri had her doubts. Lhiau knew much more than he was telling. Jekri needed to find out what that was.
And what was his plan? Hitherto, he had given out the dark-matter cloaks only grudgingly, and even then only to the ships that had been sent out with the express purpose of finding Voyager. Now he was handing them out with abandon and seemed to have forgotten his driving quest of recovering the wayward scientist and the Federation ship.
“Little Dagger,” came the Empress’s smooth voice, chilling Jekri to the bone with its icy timbre. “Come forward.”
Jekri rose and strode boldly to the high table, executing a quick bow. “Your Excellency?”
“What are you doing here?” The Empress’s anger was not even veiled anymore.
“I received an invitation, Your Excellency, and did not think to insult you by not attending,” Jekri replied.
“You received no invitation,” said the Empress. Jekri thought of the crisp cream envelope, a throwback to an earlier time, which had been hand delivered, of the name card on the table where she had just been sitting. For a long moment she stared at her liege. She had known the Empress for years, had watched her grow from a precocious young girl into this stunningly lovely, brilliant woman.
Before her sat a stranger, and the knowledge was alarming.
Jekri bowed again, lower this time. “My apologies,” she said, her voice controlled. “My assistant must have been mistaken. With your permission, then, I shall take my leave and return to where I may do the Empire the most good.”
“In your subcommander’s bed?” snapped the Empress. Snickers went around the hall and Jekri turned bright green.
Slowly she smiled, her silver eyes hard and angry. “Nay, Your Excellency. He comes to mine when I call him.”
The snickers turned to laughter and there were smatterings of approving applause.
I have to get out of here, Jekri thought, feeling something akin to panic even as she turned to face the crowd and accept their applause.
Yes, came Lhiau’s thoughts. You certainly do.
“You may leave us,” snapped the Empress.
A third time Jekri bowed, and, head held high, she strode at just the right pace out of the hall. When she got out into the foyer and the huge, ornate doors closed behind her, she slumped against the base of a statue, trying to slow her racing heart.
“Is the honored chairman well?” It was a servant. His inquiry was polite enough.
“It was a trifle warm inside the feast hall,” Jekri answered. “But I am well enough.” She nodded and left. She could feel Lhiau’s contempt snapping at her heels like a pack of wild fvaiin.
He had brought her here to humiliate her. He had turned the Empress against her, and wanted her to see it. Jekri’s position, perhaps even her very life, hung on a slender thread, and Lhiau pulled that thread.
No one in the Romulan Empire was safe from him.
She did not return to her ship, but to her offices in the capital. Jekri chafed at the time, only a few seconds in reality, that it took for her to pass the various security measures. She had her eyes, fingerprints, DNA examined and was finally let into her own office.
Like everything about Jekri Kaleh, the office of the chairman of the Tal Shiar was in scrupulous order. No digging through awkward piles for her. When she needed something, she was able to place her fingers on it within moments.
She found the file she needed and called it up on the computer. It was a routine report handed in by one of her field spies. A few weeks ago, swamped by the urgent need to find Telek and the starship, she had scanned the thin file and dismissed it. There were always dissidents. One had to judge who was dangerous and who was not.
These she had filed in the latter category, but now she hungrily perused the file as if it contained her salvation.
Because, she realized, it probably did.
INTERLUDE
THE ENTITY’S FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE STRANGE, frightening matter of which the Presence had warned it went smoothly. The matter was drifting alone in space, a cluster of something that was once right and natural and had been made terribly wrong. The Entity felt sorry for it. It had had no choice. Gently, the Entity engulfed the wrong things into itself, rendering them harmless.
They did not fight; they had no sentience. But the Entity wondered if that was entirely correct. After all, the Entity was no corporeal thing, trapped in a body. And it had sentience. It thought comfort, and peace, and was content in its task.
Again and again, it sought out what the Presence had called corrupted dark matter and pulled the tiny bits into its mammoth, limitless self. It was an easy task, a joyful task, and one that had at its end a great and wondrous purpose.
A few times the Entity found the wrong things in the hearts of stars; sometimes in the bones of planets. It moved with a timeless grace to gather up the pieces, extracting them from other matter with an ease that it did not know it possessed.
It moved at a speed that was unknowable to places unseen, harvesting the wrong things like a child plucking flowers.
It knew a faint ripple of discontent. A child plucking flowers? How did it know these things? Dimly, something that might have been memory stirred, and the Entity was confused.
Its confusion increased when it came to a planet populated by sentient beings.
Because it recognized them.
CHAPTER
7
TELEK AND SEVEN STOOD TOGETHER IN ASTROMETRICS. Torres and Khala stayed behind in engineering, ready to shut everything down the minute any danger was perceived. They had consulted with the senior staff for suggestions and received the captain’s approval for this first trial run. Yet they all hesitated. Telek was familiar with the grip of fear and the paralysis it often caused, and he was the first to shake it off.
“R’Mor to Torres. We are prepared. Is everything in order in engineering?”
The briefest of hesitations, then, “We’re ready. Go ahead.”
The simulations they had conducted on the holodeck had varied wildly. One scenario had shown everything proceeding perfectly until the final step. Another had shown almost the exact opposite—things went wrong at the outset. A third granted them partial success. Each time, save for that single, nearly perfect one at the very beginning, something different had gone wrong. They were starting to run out of time; the amount of dark matter was growing at an exponential rate. Thus far, it hadn’t caused any major damage to flesh or equipment, but Janeway had given the command: Do it.
“Then let us begin,” said Telek.
Even the self-assured Seven of Nine seemed hesitant, her metal-clad fingers hovering over the controls before she began to tap in the proper sequence with a deft touch. Telek monitored her progress from another console.
“Section fourteen, mark six,” said Seven. “There is a large cluster of dark matter.”
“An excellent test subject,” said Telek, his voice perhaps a touch too flat in his attempt to keep any trace of nervousness out of it.
“I will attempt to lock on to it,” came Khala’s voice. They had rerouted the transporter through engineering, the better to be able to watch everything at once and perform emergency shutdown procedures if needed.
This, as far as Telek was concerned, was the trickiest part. He had conducted dozens of experiments with dark matter in the laboratory. Never had they been able to lock on to it with a transporter, let alone dematerialize it. The stuff wasn’t ordinary, baryonic matter, as he had told them repeatedly. How could you—
“I’ve got it locked,” said Khala, her voice higher and filled with pleasure.
Telek and Seven exchanged pleased glances. Even the former Borg was tense and excited, Telek saw.
“Remarkable. Well done, Khala,” he said heartily. Torres’s theory about utilizing that unique frequency shown to them by the Shepherds was, thus far, working beautifully. He moved to stand beside Seven. She had adjusted the computer sensors to visually depict the clus
ter of dark matter. There it was on her screen, a pulsing blip of yellow color in the lower right-hand corner. Telek swallowed hard.
“Attempting dematerialization,” said Khala.
Before their eyes, the yellow blip faded and disappeared. Telek let out a huge breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. The dark matter was now dematerialized, ready to be rematerialized inside a safe container.
He and Seven sprinted to engineering, not caring that they ran to the turbolift. Seconds later, they entered engineering to see Khala and Torres struggling not to grin. They weren’t out of the woods yet, and they all knew it. But they had passed the first barrier to success.
All activity in engineering save that directly involved with transporting the dark matter had ceased. Torres’s team stood quietly, watching raptly.
“Okay, Khala,” said Torres. Her gaze was fastened on the hovering sphere. “Transport into the sphere.”
Khala touched the controls. The steady, pleasant hum the sphere had hitherto emitted turned into a screeching groan that assaulted the ears. The light grew bright, brighter, searing the retina, and Telek was forced to close his eyes even though he wanted to watch, wanted to see what would happen next.
This was surely the end. They had miscalculated, and this close to the dark matter, they’d all be dead within minutes. It would shatter the sphere, invade their bodies, phase them in and out of existence, and—
The hum ebbed. The light dimmed.
The little ball’s light was now bright red, not purple, and they could see millions of tiny specks floating safely inside it.
“The second step has been successfully accomplished,” declared Seven, as if they couldn’t all see it for themselves.
“I’m constructing the warp shell,” said Torres, her fingers flying. “Khala, transport on my signal … now!”
Again the terrible sound filled engineering, and again the bright light, blood red this time, nearly blinded them. When the sound and light both faded, the ball was once more its serene hue of purple.
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