by Dave Stern
When he’d decided to abandon the Confederacy some months back (it had taken him only a few weeks in the governor’s office to realize the institution’s problems were insoluble, that the Confederacy was not going to survive, and that he could either go down with it in flames or make other plans), he had debated between several different destinations. His first thought was Orion space; the traders there operated under a very loose set of rules, and there was always money to be made, but there were risks as well. Most prominent among those risks being the Orions themselves, who would just as soon cut your throat as live up to their end of a bargain. Had he been a hundred years younger, Sen would have embraced the challenge. He’d cut a fair amount of throats in his time. But he was nearing the end of his organic life span, and felt no urge to continually have to prove himself in what amounted to battle. He had also explored a potential alliance with a highly avaricious merchant race called the Verengi, who he had heard of through the Pfau some years back, whose existence he had dismissed as rumor at the time. The rumors turned out to be true, however, and after several days of concentrated effort Sen had managed to make contact with one of those Verengi, an official who styled himself the vice-nagus and whose initial starting point for negotiations involved a twenty-five-thousand-word legal document outlining the various exceptions to the safe haven Sen was asking for. And so he gave up on the Verengi.
Eventually, he had chosen the Empire, because unlike so many of the other races he dealt with, these Klingons never pretended to be something they were not. He also had the benefit of knowing one of their number quite well—General Kui’Tan, whom he had befriended, in a manner of speaking, during his service on Coreida. And so, after a series of surreptitious messages back and forth, Sen had agreed to the Empire’s terms, and set his own plans in motion for the escape. Those plans had worked to perfection: the system outages, the off-world deposits, the explosion at the party, even the unexpected arrival of the human captain and the necessity of incorporating his kidnapping into his agenda, all had gone off without a hitch. Except…
Something was wrong now. After an initially productive series of conversations, the commander had been avoiding him the past few days. And he had yet to allow the governor to speak with Kui’Tan. Had yet to allow Sen access to the ship’s computers, which was a very smart decision, as once Sen got access to the computers—
There was a knock on the door.
“Enter,” Sen said.
It was the female V’reth.
“You summoned me earlier,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you wish me to pleasure you?”
The female was built like a warrior, and approached the sexual act as same. Sen had neither the appetite nor the strength for that kind of activity right now.
“No,” he said. “I am checking on the status of my request.”
“To speak with the commander?”
“Yes.”
“The commander is busy.”
“Then I would like to speak directly to Kui’Tan.”
“To communicate with Qo’noS?”
“Yes.”
The female shook her head. “That cannot be allowed. We are running silent.”
“Then I wish to leave this room,” he said, getting to his feet. “I am tired of these four walls.”
The female blocked his path.
“That cannot be allowed either,” she said.
There was a neural disruptor woven into the fabric of his cloak, which he’d charged off the power receptacle here. For a second, Sen was tempted to use it.
No, he decided. The female wasn’t worth the bother. Or the exposure of what for now was his only weapon.
“Would it be allowed if you were my escort?” he suggested.
The female frowned.
“I will have to check with the commander.”
“Please do.”
“The commander is busy now.”
“I’ll wait.”
She nodded, and shut the door.
Sen waited till he heard her footsteps clanging down the corridor, then went to his case and opened it. Inside was a flexpadd and a data cube containing personal images from when he was very, very young. Pictures of his parents, his relatives, the flesh-and-blood Roia…he’d asked permission to tie the cube in to the Klingon system when he’d come aboard, so he could view them at his leisure. Kareg had turned him down. Not surprising. Under similar circumstances—a stranger coming aboard, wanting to access the ship’s computer—he would have been cautious too.
The caution was well advised. In addition to the images, the cube also contained code for a modified version of the Roia software program. Directly linking it in to the system was the quickest way to insure that program’s penetration of the Klingon system, but there were others.
Sen activated a concealed transmitter within the cube. He felt a slight tingling just behind the temples, and then it was done.
The Roia subroutines were now stored in his implant. Of course the memory there was volatile; if he could not off-load the subroutines into another computer, they would degenerate within a matter of hours. He would have to try again later. If he was, however, able to leave the cabin, find his way to an unsecured terminal elsewhere in the ship—
“What are you doing?”
Sen looked up and saw that V’Reth had returned. She stood in the half-open doorway, glaring at him.
He held up the flexpadd for her to see. “I am writing.”
“What are you writing?”
“That does not concern you.” He set the padd down, and stood. “Has the commander granted my request?”
“He has agreed to allow you to move about the ship in certain areas. At my discretion.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Now. I will see what you have written.”
Sen supposed he should offer token resistance. “No.”
“Do not,” she said, “make me take it from you.”
Sighing theatrically, he handed the flexpadd to her.
V’Reth looked it over quickly, and glared at him.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Poetry.”
“You have used my name.”
He looked to the ground, feigning embarrassment.
“It is true.”
She glanced from the padd to Sen, and then back at the padd, and began to read:
The silver of steel
V’Reth
The touch of skin
V’Reth
Beauty, armored, and yet open.
Garbage, Sen thought. Incoherent trash he’d composed earlier this morning, in the span of ten heartbeats, anticipating the potential need for distraction.
He was so smart, sometimes…he amazed even himself.
The Klingon eyed him suspiciously.
“You mock me,” she said.
“No.”
“These are you words?”
“They are.”
She made a noise in her throat, and flung the padd onto the floor.
Careful, Sen was about to say, but then she had pinned him to the bed.
“You will pleasure me,” she said, and because Sen feared that to do otherwise might make her suspicious, he did so, knowing that afterward they would walk through the common areas of the ship, through the crew’s mess perhaps, or near the engineering deck, and he would pass an unsecured computer, and broadcast the Roia subroutines, and they would burrow their way into the ship’s computer system, and then, after some time had passed, a day or so, Sen guessed…
He would come and go as he pleased, and woe to anyone who tried to stop him.
Twenty-One
After eating, Hoshi and Theera returned to the analysis chamber. The walk back was silent, Hoshi digesting what the Andorian had told her, Theera—as usual—keeping her thoughts to herself. Hoshi wondered why the marriage had seemed like such a surprise to her. Certainly, it wasn’t because Theera had kept it a secret; the two of them weren’t even really friends, although Hosh
i did feel they were, at last, becoming friendly.
No, she decided, it was what she’d seen—last night, and just now. Or rather, what she hadn’t seen. Watching her husband yesterday, talking about him just now, Theera had displayed the same depth of emotion, the same intensity of feeling, that she’d shown while demonstrating how the food replicator worked. Which was to say, none at all.
That was what Hoshi found odd. A contradictory piece of information, indeed.
The two of them entered the analysis chamber.
Something was happening, she saw instantly. A number of Mediators had left their stations, and were gathered before the transparent window at the far end of the chamber, looking out into space.
“What is it?” Theera asked.
“Don’t know.” Hoshi saw Younger Emmen at one of the consoles, and went to him. Posed the same question.
“We have detected a concentration of Antianna vessels, paralleling the fleet’s course. Here.” He pointed at one of the terminal screens in front of him. Hoshi pressed forward to take a look.
It was a tactical display, much like the ones Enterprise used. A variety of Armada vessels, all shapes and sizes, blinking green, moving from left to right across the bottom of the screen.
In the top half of the display, six Antianna ships, flashing orange, moving in the same direction.
“Is this to scale?” Hoshi asked.
“Roughly.”
She pointed to the Antianna vessels. “These ships look bigger than the others. The ones we’ve run into before.”
“They are.”
“I mean much, much bigger.” Telemetry was coming in across the bottom of the display. Hoshi studied it a moment, did some calculations in her head, and frowned.
Each of the six Antianna ships was approximately four times the size of Enterprise. Which made them at least twice as large as any other ship within the Armada. If they had anything like the speed, or maneuverability, or firepower of the smaller vessels…
The next time hostilities began, it wasn’t going to be a fight.
It was going to be a slaughter.
“You sure these are Antianna ships?”
“External configuration is similar.” Emmen leaned around her, and keyed in a few commands. “Spectrographic analysis indicates similar hull composition.”
“Why haven’t we seen anything this big from them before?”
Emmen shook his head.
“What about life signs?” Hoshi asked.
“As before. Bipedal, humanoid…yet we are unable to pinpoint readings any further. Most frustrating.”
Just like aboard Enterprise, Hoshi recalled. She recalled too what Elder Green had told her the night before, and frowned.
“I hope General Jaedez is not planning on a preemptive strike,” she said.
“I am not privy to the general’s thinking,” Emmen said brusquely. “I can tell you that as per Elder Green’s orders, we are continuing to transmit standard hail messages, in the two hundred fifty-one known language families of this quadrant. Expressions of peaceful intent, our desire to reach an understanding with the Antianna.”
Expressions of peaceful intent being broadcast by a war fleet. Hoshi wondered how that would look to the Antianna? A little suspicious, perhaps?
She hoped they weren’t planning a preemptive strike.
She glanced down again at tactical, at the six huge alien ships, and felt a little twinge of something in the pit of her stomach. Nervousness, perhaps. A trace of fear.
She remembered Theera then, and turned around.
But the Andorian was gone.
Hoshi found her back in their quarters—or rather, found evidence of her in their quarters, that evidence being the privacy curtain activated across the Andorian’s half of the room.
“Theera?” Hoshi called out. “Are you in there?”
There was no response.
Hoshi tried for a few more minutes, and then gave up. The Andorian’s reaction was understandable, given what had happened to her aboard Lokune. Given the size of Antianna ships out there. In her shoes, Hoshi would be hiding as well.
Thing is, there wasn’t really any place safe to hide. Not aboard S-12, anyway. Best to concentrate on solving the problem, in her opinion, rather than running from it.
Hoshi returned to the analysis chamber. Most of the Mediators had drifted back to their stations. She stood by herself, alone in front of the huge, transparent wall, and stared out at the stars.
Confusing, surprising things happening everywhere.
Out there, the Antianna, whose intentions she could only guess at, whose technology—the speed, maneuverability, and suddenly increased size of their ships, their ability to somehow confuse the most sophisticated sensors (not forgetting, of course, the instantaneous, impossible reconfiguration of the ship’s power grid Trip had pointed out to the captain during their last encounter with the ship)—was equally puzzling.
And in here, Theera, whose behavior she found stranger with each passing hour. What was the Andorian hiding—and why?
The harder she worked at solving those problems, Hoshi thought, the more confusing they seemed to get.
She decided to try something different—at least with regard to translating the Antianna signal. Instead of concentrating on the fifty-seven pulses themselves, she would look at context—gather facts that might help determine who the Antianna were, and thus, what their language might be like.
She’d done something like this before, aboard Enterprise, but the resources available to her now were much greater. She returned to her station, to the virtual library, and got to work.
First, she set up a database of her own, a list of civilizations that had established a presence in this area. It was a lengthy document—close to a hundred races, by her count (she went back to the time of the Barreon and Allied Worlds, though of course she left them off the list because the record about the extent of their civilizations was highly contradictory and confusing). She made a list of language families associated with those civilizations—and the number doubled.
Then she weaned that list down, removing from it first the languages Starfleet had in its data banks, and then ones she found within the Mediators’ database. That eliminated all but a half-dozen species—all bipedal, all with a vast number of waiting-to-be-translated documents available in the Mediators database.
She spent the next few hours going over those documents.
None of them bore any resemblance to the Antianna signal.
Hell, she thought, and stood up. Enough.
She returned to her quarters. The privacy screen was still up. She didn’t even try calling for Theera; the Andorian was probably asleep, anyway. It was late.
Hoshi collapsed on her own bunk, and closed her eyes.
She slept.
She dreamt.
In her dream, she was back aboard Enterprise. Captain Archer was alive, and sitting in the command chair. The Antianna were attacking.
He turned to Hoshi, and smiled, and then looked past her.
She turned, and saw Theera.
“What are they trying to tell us?” Archer asked the Andorian. “What does the signal mean?”
“I can’t say,” Theera told him.
“That’s not a question, that’s a direct order.”
The Andorian shook her head. “Three guesses.”
Archer frowned. “Okay,” he said. “Three guesses. That’s fair.”
The captain thought a moment.
“Does it mean, ‘We come in peace?’”
“No.”
“‘This far, and no farther’?”
“No.”
“ ‘Prepare for a preemptive strike?’”
“No.” Theera shook her head. “That’s all you get, I’m sorry.”
On the screen, the Antianna ship fired. There was a flash of brilliant, impossibly white light, and a second later, a huge shock wave.
Archer was blown backwards off his chair, and disappeare
d from view.
Trip sat down, and took his place.
“I don’t know anything about languages,” he said. “What I know is machines.”
“Machines,” Theera shook her head. “No. That’s not it.”
“Wait a minute,” Trip said. “That wasn’t a guess.”
“Sorry.” Theera said. “Try again.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Hoshi got up from her chair, and stood over Theera. “If you know what the signal means, tell us for God’s sakes, before…”
The screen behind her flashed white.
Another huge shock wave hit the ship, even bigger than the previous one, and Hoshi stumbled, and hit the deck, hit her head very, very hard.
Her vision swam. The familiar outlines of the bridge blurred to gray.
She woke up, and opened her eyes.
She was lying on the deck of the Kanthropian vessel.
It was pitch dark.
And beneath her, the ship was shaking.
They were under attack, she realized. They were really under attack.
She got to her knees, and climbed back on the bed. She reached out and found the companel, hit the light pad. Nothing happened.
“Dammit,” she said, and squinted out into the room. There was a soft glow coming from just ahead of her—a row of emergency lights, along the wall, leading toward the door.
Theera’s privacy curtain was down.
“Theera!” she called out.
There was no response.
The room shook again, and an instant later, far in the distance, Hoshi heard a deep rumble, like thunder. An explosion, within S-12, not enemy fire.
Please don’t tell me, she thought, that the ship is falling apart. She realized she didn’t even know where the escape pods were.
No time like the present to find out, she decided.
She found her boots and walked to the door, following the row of lights. Of course it wouldn’t open for her, not without power, but there had to be a manual override around here somewhere….
She fumbled around the edges of the door frame. Nothing. She started hammering on the door.
“Hey!” she yelled as loud as she could. “Is anybody out there? Hello!”