by David Mack
“Then we shall require a distraction,” Spock said.
Chekov cracked an impish grin. “Leave that to me.”
* * *
As an engineer, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott was not, by nature, given to taking anything on faith. He liked knowing the variables, the specifications of a situation, and planning his response to fit. Consequently, hearing Pavel Chekov say “Leave that to me” had not exactly filled Scott with confidence.
What’s he up to now? Getting us all killed, I’d wager.
After a brief whispered consultation with Spock, the young ensign had stolen away into the shadows alone, back up the ramp to a tier above the large banks of machinery where the Klingons were working. Scott remained baffled as to what sort of “distraction” Chekov could have devised. So far as Scott was aware, the landing party had not brought along any explosives, and none of the pharmaceuticals in their first-aid kits were known to be effective against Klingons. So what was he playing at?
He checked his tricorder’s chrono. Chekov had been gone for over ten minutes. Where was he? What was the impetuous ensign doing?
Before Scott was able to waste another minute pondering those questions, Chekov emerged in a fleeting dash from the spiral ramp. The mop-topped, fresh-faced Russian stayed in the shadows along the walls as he made his way back to the landing party. As he fell in at the rear of the group, he couldn’t contain his mischievous glee. “Watch this.”
Several seconds passed without incident.
Sulu furrowed his brow at Chekov. “Watch what?”
“Wait for it.”
It was tempting for Scott to think perhaps Chekov had gone mad. Then he saw signs of confusion and alarm sweep through the Klingons surrounding the generator apparatus, both the guards and the scientists. They were pawing at their uniforms, pivoting back and forth as if looking for something—and then their uniforms and other garments started to disintegrate.
Sleeves decayed and vanished, followed by trouser legs, then tunics and jackets fell apart. Orphaned belt buckles and jacket clasps fell to the hard marble-like floor and plinked away into unplumbed crevices. In less than a minute, the Klingons stationed around the generator were all but naked—and thoroughly perplexed.
Just as baffled, Scott looked back at Chekov. “Laddie . . . what did you do?”
“As I thought,” Chekov said, feigning nonchalance, “the Klingons prefer to wear natural fibers.” Another flash of that blinding grin. “Plant fibers.”
All at once, Scott understood. Chekov had deployed what was left of the landing party’s plant-demolishing aerosol to deprive the Klingons of all plant-based fabrics in their uniforms. Invisible, silent, odorless, and ineffectual on animal tissue, the spray had proved an ideal means of staging a nonlethal diversion. “Nicely done, lad.” He chuckled under his breath at the Klingons as they scurried out of the generator facility. “I’ll bet you they’ll all be wearing nothing but leather and metal the next time we meet ’em.”
“A fascinating prediction, Mister Scott.” Spock nodded toward their target. “But we have more pressing concerns.”
“Aye, sir.”
As the last of the Klingons left the generator area, Scott took point and led the team to the cluster of Klingon electronics. He pointed out some of their more common components. “That’s a portable network switch, Mister Spock. And the cylinder? That’s a backup data node.”
“Excellent,” said the first officer. “I will need a few minutes to patch in and download their backup data. Mister Sulu, Mister Chekov: stand sentry at the points where the Klingons exited. Mister Scott, please make a detailed scan of the command console.”
Scott nodded. “Aye, sir.”
Sulu and Chekov split up to guard the entrances while Spock broke into the Klingons’ data network and copied their research findings into his own tricorder. In the meantime, Scott surveyed the generator’s main console. The Klingons had ripped the thing open, damaging who knew how many critical systems and components inside. Seeing such an advanced feat of alien engineering savaged by such clumsy hands made Scott shake his head in frustration.
I’ll never understand Klingons. They say they want to conquer the galaxy—but if they don’t learn to respect technology, they won’t stand a chance. What’re they thinking?
He was just finishing up his tricorder scan of the generator’s control system when Chekov and Sulu started to wave silent warnings that the Klingons were on their way back. Within seconds Spock was at Scott’s side, beckoning the two junior officers to regroup. “We have what we need,” Spock said. “It’s time to withdraw.” Once Sulu and Chekov reached him and Scott, the first officer pointed them toward the spiral ramp. “Take point, Mister Sulu.”
“Aye, sir.”
The four of them climbed the spiral ramp and were halfway to the level at which they’d entered when Klingon disruptor blasts screamed up at them from the generator facility below. Shots caromed off the pearlescent walls, which appeared nearly impervious to directed energy pulses. Sulu sprinted away with Chekov close behind him. Spock and Scott were forced to duck to cover briefly before continuing their own mad dash for escape.
It came as no surprise when Klingon alarms blared down the curving passageways of the citadel. Their reverberating wails hounded the landing party all the way back through the airlock to the moon pool. As the four Enterprise officers charged toward the water, a squad of Klingon soldiers raced in through a dilating doorway on the far side of the pod hangar. The Klingons gave no warning—they opened fire, forcing the landing party to take cover behind a pod.
Wild shots tore past over their heads and bounced from one gleaming surface to another inside the hangar, creating an instant cross fire. Chekov flattened himself to the floor and cringed at each near miss that screamed past him. “They have us pinned down.”
Spock was unfazed. “For the moment.” He activated his tricorder, watched its display, then zeroed in on an oval panel on a wall nearby. “Gentlemen, prepare to dive.”
Scott did as ordered. On the other side of the pod the landing party was using for cover, the Klingons advanced two by two in cover formation, darting from one pod or piece of heavy equipment to another. By the time Scott fixed his mask and rebreather into place, Spock had finished fine-tuning his tricorder’s settings. “Brace yourselves,” he said.
A grouping of lights on the oval wall panel changed colors. Scott felt his ears pop as both the inner and outer doors of the airlock spiraled open.
Then came the water. It swelled out of the moon pool and expanded across the deck, pushing aside anything in its path, including pods, machinery, and the Klingon security team. Moving with tremendous speed and violence, the crashing water swept the Klingons off their feet and slammed them into the hangar’s far wall.
Spock sprang into action. “Dive!”
Scott, Chekov, and Sulu followed Spock into the flood. Even underwater Scott felt its surging pressure while he fought his way back to the dilated underwater portal. Only after the landing party had exited into the lake did Scott feel as if they had truly escaped.
Stray shots from the rooftop sentries hectored the landing party’s retreat as they reached the far shore and darted through the gap they’d made in the lake’s wall of thorns. Back under cover in the rain forest, they ran like madmen, sprinting as if tigers were nipping their heels.
Only once they were aboard the Galileo and racing at full impulse away from Usilde to their rendezvous with the Enterprise did Scott heave a sigh of relief. Sulu and Chekov manned the shuttlecraft’s controls while Spock perused the stolen data files on his tricorder.
In a confidential timbre, Scott asked the half Vulcan, “Did we get what we need?”
“It appears we acquired everything the Klingons know about that facility, as well as what use they plan to make of it.” Spock’s cool mien betrayed a hint of a frown. “I
will know more after I analyze this data on the Enterprise.” He looked up, curious. “Did you complete your scan of the command console?”
“Aye.” Scott was unable to hide his doubts. “But whether I’ll be able to make heads or tails of it? That remains to be seen.”
Five
On a ship as small as a Romulan bird-of-prey, everything was in short supply at all times: fresh food, stiff drinks, medicine, spare parts, time to sleep—but no commodity aboard ship was so rare as privacy. Tight spaces packed with as many personnel as the ship’s systems could support had proved effective at preventing the sequestration of secrets.
Even the sanctum of the commander’s quarters offered little relief from eavesdropping. Commander Creelok, like most members of the Imperial star navy, was no claustrophobe, but despite a lifetime of service on starships, he found the confines of his private compartment stifling. They provided him barely enough room to pace a full stride from rack to desk before forcing him to turn about. Tucked into the deepest section of the small ship’s disklike primary hull, the single room had no viewport. Creelok knew this was for his protection, but many nights he would gladly have traded safety for a view of the warp-stretched stars outside the Velibor.
His door signal buzzed. With a press of a button on his desktop, he unlocked the door, which slid open to admit Centurion Mirat. The silver-haired veteran stepped inside, then manually shut and locked the door behind him. Fear lurked in his weary eyes. “Are we secure?”
Creelok stole a wary look at the overhead. “As much as we can hope to be.”
Mirat frowned. He understood Creelok’s warning all too well. It was likely the room had been equipped by the Tal Shiar with a number of listening devices. Most of the time they were used by the Empire’s political officers to ensure full loyalty and compliance by its command-grade officers. But the surveillance systems were just as often abused by ambitious young field operatives such as Sadira, who Creelok suspected was auditing their every word.
The centurion produced a small device from under his tunic and set it atop Creelok’s desk. He switched it on with a tap of his finger. A faint green indicator light blinked on to confirm that it was functioning and had blocked the receptors of one or more listening devices.
“She pulled rank,” Mirat said. “Changed our heading during the overnight shift.”
The commander reined in his anger at the news. “To where?”
“Unknown. She entered the new coordinates, then locked us out of the helm.”
Creelok slammed his fist against the bulkhead. “Damn her! She treats me like a spare part on my own ship.”
A solemn look settled over Mirat. “The crew’s worried she’s taking us into enemy space.” He studied the commander’s face for any sign of a reaction. “Is she?”
He replied with indignant sarcasm, “I’m just the commander. Why would the Tal Shiar tell me what my ship and crew are being used for?”
“Perhaps it’s time we asked her.”
“Challenge a Tal Shiar officer? A capital idea, Centurion. But tell me: Do you plan to sleep with one eye open for the rest of your life?”
“I learned that trick growing up in the slums of Ki Baratan, sir.”
“No doubt.” Creelok pondered their predicament. “Have you spoken with Ranimir? He might be able to patch into the sensors, gauge our heading.”
Mirat nodded. “We tried. Sadira isolated the sensor feeds so that only the autopilot can access them. Until we reach our destination, the rest of us will be flying blind.”
“So, she expects we’d resist if we knew our journey’s endpoint. To me, that suggests she means to place us in peril, but she also needs to ensure none of us can betray her plan.”
“We’re on the hunt, then.”
“Most likely. But who or what is our prey?”
The door signal buzzed, and both men froze. They traded anxious looks. Then the signal buzzed again, drawing their shared attention to the room’s sole point of ingress or egress. Creelok reached over to his desk and pressed the button to unlock the door. It slid aside to reveal Sadira. The lithe human woman stepped inside Creelok’s quarters without waiting for an invitation. She trained her piercing stare on the commander as she said, “Centurion, get out.”
“The centurion is my guest,” Creelok said. “He’ll go when—”
“He’ll leave now, Commander.”
There was no reason to think Sadira’s threat an idle one, but Mirat held his ground until Creelok dismissed him with a nod. “That’s all, Centurion.”
Mirat put his fist to his chest, then extended his arm in salute to Creelok before walking to the door. As the centurion left, his only acknowledgment of Sadira was a hateful glower.
She waited until the door closed before she continued. “I’m to understand you and the centurion have . . . misgivings . . . about my current assignment.”
“Not at all. That would imply we knew what your mission was.”
A coy half smirk. “Come now, Commander. Must we play games?”
“Is that what you think this is? A game?” Creelok gestured at the bulkheads. “Because I see a ship and a crew of nearly a hundred brave Romulans—all of which are being put at risk by some hevam wikah with delusions of grandeur.”
Just as he had hoped, Sadira flinched at the ancient Rihannsu pejoratives. Her lips thinned and vanished into a taut frown, and her hand inched toward the dagger on her belt. He almost hoped she would try to draw her blade. That would be all the provocation he needed to cut her down without risking his career before a military tribunal.
The Tal Shiar officer denied him his revenge once again. She adopted an air of false comity and folded her hands behind her back. “How can I set your mind at ease, Commander?”
“Tell me where you’re taking my ship.”
“I’m afraid that’s on a need-to-know basis.”
She’ll tell me anything except what I want to know. “Are we crossing the Neutral Zone?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny such suspicions.”
All he wanted in that moment was to wrap his weathered hands around her slender neck and feel her cervical vertebrae shatter in his grip. “I don’t care what they tell you at the Tal Shiar. There are limits to your authority on this ship.” He stepped forward, invading her space. “If you plan to put my crew in danger, I have a right to know. So tell me the truth, you sussethrai—are you using my crew to start a war?”
Her smile was as cold and deadly as space. “No, Commander, I’m looking to win one—without anyone ever knowing we were there.”
* * *
The conference room’s gauzy curtains were aglow with a blinding splash of golden sunlight as Sarek called the meeting to order. “Fellow delegates, honored guests, I bid you good morning and welcome. Please be seated.”
On one side of the table, with their backs to the wall of barely screened windows and its blinding pour of daylight, was the Federation delegation, with Sarek seated in the middle. On his left was his economic adviser, Aravella Gianaris, a human woman with black hair and an olive-tinted complexion who preferred to be described as an Athenian rather than as a Terran. On his right was his military adviser, Beel Zeroh, an irascible Izarian of questionable credentials who Sarek suspected would not last long in the Federation diplomatic corps, but with whose dubious services he was for the moment burdened. To either side beyond them were attachés and various policy specialists in fields ranging from agriculture and aquaculture to transportation, planetary infrastructure management, and general legal counsel.
Lining the other side of the oblong, vaguely oval conference table were the members of the Klingon delegation. Councillor Gorkon sat directly across from Sarek, in the middle of his group. Councillor Prang was seated across from Zeroh, while Durok, a delegate of undetermined portfolio, faced Gianaris. Filling out the Klingons’ ranks were advisers
and assistants whose job descriptions were roughly equivalent to those of their opposites across the table.
Once everyone had settled into his or her chair, Sarek continued. “If you would all please activate your data slates,” he said, leading by example, “I would like to propose that we review today’s agenda. Because the first step toward peace—a lasting and enforceable cease-fire—has already been granted us by the Organians, we are free to—”
“We are anything but free,” Prang cut in. “Neither of us chose this peace. It was forced upon us, and if we refuse it, the Organians will leave us both at the mercy of our neighbors, none of whom they saw fit to saddle with the same constraints!”
Gorkon leaned toward Prang and said under his breath, “That’s enough.”
Instead of demurring, Prang stood from his chair, which fell over behind him. “This entire proceeding is a sham! A farce! Klingons do not negotiate! They take what is theirs!”
“The Federation has the utmost respect for your people’s ways,” Sarek said.
Prang shot back, “Then stand with us! Help us crush the Organians!”
“Just as we have no desire to be your victim, neither do we wish to be your accomplice.”
The Klingon spat on the tabletop. Sarek recoiled, more out of reflex than from disgust. “You Federates are all the same!” Prang snapped. “Pretty talk, no action! Useless petaQpu’!”
His insult lifted Zeroh from his chair, finger pointed, face contorted in rage. “You’re ones to talk! You’re just thugs! Half-educated savages! Animals! We ought to do the galaxy a favor and put your kind down like rabid—”
“Sit down, Zeroh,” Sarek said, his voice raised but still even in tone. Though he had worked all his life to act free of emotion, Beel Zeroh tested the limits of his Vulcan equanimity.
Across the table, Prang sneered at Zeroh. “Yes! Sit down, yIntagh. Let the warriors—” His sentence ended abruptly as he became aware that the blade of Gorkon’s d’k tahg was under his jaw, just behind his carotid artery. The Klingon delegation’s leader applied just enough pressure to draw a thin line of blood from the surface of Prang’s exposed throat.