Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire

by David R. George III

  In part, that undefined emotion had driven him to join the archeological teams working at B’hala. The revered Bajoran city had been lost for twenty millennia, until Sisko himself had unearthed it during his command of Deep Space 9. Eivos Calan, at the time a prylar in the Bajoran religious hierarchy, started toiling at the site immediately after its rediscovery. Years later, he even supervised Jake, who, for a few months during Sisko’s time in the Celestial Temple, chose to volunteer at the B’hala dig as a means of feeling closer to his father. Sisko supposed that his own decision to enlist in the excavation reflected similar emotions with respect to Calan, with whom he’d grown close.

  Although Kasidy had claimed to understand Sisko’s need to help at B’hala, she’d been opposed to it. She pointed to the “unusual brain activity” that led him to the lost city in the first place, and which almost killed him. Quite simply, she said, the city scared her.

  Sisko had enrolled with the archeologists anyway. Kasidy seemed to resent him for it, and so before long, he quit. He resented her for that. They agreed to put the incident behind them, but bitterness remained within him, and he could see that it remained within her too—that, and more.

  Kasidy had never mentioned the Ohalu text, a very old book of prophecies recovered from the ruins of B’hala. The ancient manuscript—it antedated the city itself—identified their daughter as the “Infant Avatar,” whose birth would usher in a new age for Bajor. A year ago, that prophecy contributed directly to the abduction of Rebecca, and nearly to her death. Though Kasidy voiced no accusations, Sisko knew that she blamed him, at least in some measure, for bringing upon them an almost unbearable ordeal, and to the brink of what would have been a crushing loss. If he hadn’t found B’hala, they never would have come so close to losing their precious Rebecca.

  But those events, and all of the thoughts and feelings they had wrought, failed to completely define the trouble between Kasidy and Sisko. What happened and what they felt contributed to it, exacerbated it, but also masked it. Only very recently had Sisko come to fully recognize the issues at the heart of it all, and the source of his terrible dread.

  But maybe now everything will be all right, he thought as he walked along St. Charles Avenue. He’d left Kasidy and Rebecca only temporarily, to protect the Federation against the Borg; he’d always intended to return to them. But after the unthinkable losses throughout the Federation, after what had taken place aboard James T. Kirk . . .

  And then he thought of his father, released from the hospital, back at home in his own bed. Maybe it’ll be all right now, he told himself again. Maybe I don’t have to talk with Kas after all.

  With a start, Sisko realized that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings. He stopped and stepped to the side of the pedestrian walkway, then took a moment to orient himself. He saw that he had almost reached Arabella Street, and so after resettling his duffel on his shoulder, he headed up to the next corner and turned left. Not more than a couple of kilometers ahead, he knew, the Mississippi River made its southernmost approach past the city. Much closer than that stood his destination.

  In the firmly entrenched dusk, islands of light centered around the lampposts, chasing away shadows from the narrow street. With satisfaction, Sisko saw that little, if anything, had changed in the neighborhood. The news kiosk still occupied the far corner, the movie theater and the playhouse still filled the second block down on the right, and in the middle of the third block on the left, Mr. Roby’s bookstore still adjoined Sisko’s Creole Kitchen.

  A warm feeling enveloped Sisko as he approached the restaurant. It didn’t surprise him to see the place mostly dark. Normally, yellow neon illuminated the outsized name Sisko’s on the sign above the front doors, with blue neon outlining the entire sign. Though his father always strived to keep the restaurant open during regular lunch and dinner hours, he also did not like turning over its operation to anybody else. Until the elder Sisko fully recovered from his infirmity, it seemed likely that his eatery would remain closed.

  Lights shined from the downstairs windows, and also from one of the rooms on the second floor. As he heard the clip-clop of a horse drawing a carriage down the street, Sisko reached for the right-hand knob on the double doors. It turned beneath his touch, and he pushed into the restaurant.

  Inside, only the lights in the foyer had been left on. The soft yellow glow did not penetrate too deeply into the main room, leaving its far corners shrouded in gloom. Chairs had been placed atop all but one of the tables, as though somebody had wanted to sweep the floor. On that one open table, which seated eight, Sisko saw glasses, dinnerware, napkins, and half-eaten plates of food, as though the meal there had been consumed in haste.

  Sisko set down his duffel and moved to the right, to the base of the steps that rose to the second story, to his father’s apartment. He saw light leaking into the stairwell from an upstairs room. “Hello?” he called, though not so loudly that he would wake his father should he be resting.

  Footsteps immediately met his greeting, hurrying toward the second-floor landing. The tread fell lightly, certainly not that of Jake or either of Sisko’s brothers. He waited to see who would emerge from the apartment.

  When Azeni Korena appeared, alone, Sisko knew at once that the situation had changed since he’d last spoken with Jake. “Mister Sisko,” she said, seeming flustered. She and Jake had been married for almost four and a half years, and she had become as much a member of the family as anybody born into it. Sisko had even invited her to call him Dad, though probably because she’d lost her parents in her youth, she preferred Mister Sisko—an appellation that he at least favored over Emissary.

  Korena rushed down toward him, the heels of her shoes banging loudly on the wooden steps. “I’m sorry,” she said as she descended, “I didn’t hear you come in.” She reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped just a pace from Sisko, anxiety revealed in her aspect.

  “I didn’t knock, I just let myself in,” he said, pretending to himself that Korena’s disquiet came from not having met him at the door. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s—” she began. She reached out and took his hand in her own, and the sadness on her face told him that he could pretend no longer.

  “What’s happened?” he asked her quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quivering, her eyes glistening. “Your father passed away.”

  Sisko staggered backward a step, and Korena grabbed at his arm to steady him. “When?” he managed to say. He felt as though he couldn’t breathe, as though he’d been punched in the gut and had the wind knocked out of him.

  “This morning,” Korena said. Tears slipped down her face, leaving quicksilver trails on her cheeks.

  “This morning,” he repeated. His father had been dead for hours and he hadn’t known, he hadn’t felt it.

  “Jake wanted to wait until you were here to tell you,” Korena explained. “He wanted you to be with family.”

  “Where is Jake?” he asked. “Is he here?” He looked past Korena to the stairs.

  “No.” She still had hold of his arm, and she squeezed, as though trying to hold him up both physically and spiritually. “I’m sorry . . . we expected you later.”

  “Where is Jake?” Sisko wanted to know, and then he recalled that his sister and brothers had come to New Orleans as well. “Where is everybody?”

  “They’re at the hospital, making arrangements,” Korena said. “When . . . when . . .” The words seemed to catch in her throat.

  Sisko stepped forward and hugged Korena to him. As she sobbed into his shoulder, he closed his eyes, causing his own tears to spill down his face. So many losses, he thought. The tens of billions killed by the Borg, including eleven thousand on Alonis, the entire crew of forty-seven aboard Cutlass, thirty-one on James T. Kirk, and nineteen on New York. Elias. Calan and Audj.

  And now my father, Sisko thought. If he hadn’t been convinced before, he was now: it had b
egun. And he knew in his heart that if he didn’t run, there would be no stopping it.

  9

  Proconsul Tomalak stood in the conference room and peered out through the large, round port. Situated just above the equator of the sphere that formed the main body of Typhon I, the room looked out over one of the six spiral arms that encircled the space station. Tomalak thought that the facility fulfilled well the intent of its designers, who had meant it to evoke the form of the galaxy. Each arm represented a founding member of the Typhon Pact, with docking ports specially fitted for their ships and an internal environment designed specifically for their species. The central globe provided a more generic setting, adapted to accommodate all of the pact members well, if none of them perfectly.

  It’s certainly not perfect for Romulans, Tomalak thought. He pulled his black suit jacket tighter about him and fastened it closed, trying to ward off the chill he felt. The lower temperatures might be to the liking of the Breen or the Kinshaya, but Romulans generally favored warmer climes. At least I don’t need an environmental suit.

  From his vantage, Tomalak could see two of the station’s spiral arms. The one to his right, belonging to the Gorn, had yet to be completed, and as the proconsul watched, tiny, space-suited figures and small labor craft buzzed about the half-finished structure. Work also continued on another of the arms, that of the Breen—currently out of Tomalak’s sight—as well as on the interior of the central sphere. While several of the powers that would make up the Typhon Pact had begun discussing an alliance more than a year ago, it had only been within the last half-year that a general, albeit still unfinalized and still unratified, agreement had been reached among five of them; the sixth, the Tzenkethi Coalition, had only recently decided to join. That so much of the space station had been finished already represented a monumental achievement.

  As Tomalak gazed out the window, he monitored the conversation behind him. Representatives from four of the other five Typhon Pact nations—all but the Tzenkethi—had arrived for the summit. While the Kinshaya envoy, Patriarch Radrigi, remained conspicuously mute, the Gorn, Tholian, and Breen diplomats filled the room with a discordant olio of hisses, chirps and clicks, and electronic warbles. Tomalak’s translator provided him the dialogue rendered in High Rihan, though he heard nothing of interest to him. Predictably, most of the current conversation centered around Tholian Ambassador Corskene complaining about the Tzenkethi’s tardiness.

  Speaker Alizome Vik Tov-A would arrive soon, Tomalak knew, otherwise he might have shared in Corskene’s displeasure. Only moments ago, Tomalak had watched through the port as the marauder ferrying Alizome from Coalition space docked at the tip of the Tzenkethi arm of the station. The great ship impressed the proconsul. Its elongated body essentially resembled a teardrop, smooth and seamless in flight, though several hatches had swung open aft to allow various gangways and umbilicals to connect to the station. Tzenkethi script fell across the hull like flowing water, which seemed like abstract art to a nonreader of the language. Tomalak found the vessel’s profile far more interesting than the black spheres of the Kinshaya or the angular, wedge-shaped craft of the Tholians, and less overwhelming than the complicated ship designs of the Gorn, Breen, or even the Romulans.

  “I cannot tolerate this laggard behavior,” Corskene announced. Tomalak heard the skitter of her six legs on the deck. Although Tholian individuals possessed both male and female characteristics, Corskene had introduced herself with a feminine title.

  Tomalak turned to see that the Tholian ambassador had moved away from the round conference table after rising from the cushioned disk on which she’d been sitting. Half the seats around the table comprised such disks, for use by the Tholians, Kinshaya, and Tzenkethi. “We will wait a bit longer,” Tomalak told her, quietly but with authority. While Praetor Tal’Aura had agreed in principle for the Romulan Star Empire to join the Typhon Pact in equal standing to the other members, he understood that his people would mean more than that to the nascent alliance. Even with the rending of the Empire by Donatra and her forces, the extent of Romulan technological, scientific, and military accomplishments would contribute strength to the Pact at a disproportionately higher level than the resources of the other nations. Consequently, and despite the fact that Tomalak knew Romulus would still benefit from the union, he considered his people “more equal” than their new allies.

  “Wait longer?” Corskene said. Her white polygonal eyes shined brightly through the faceplate of her black environmental suit. “Did you intend that as an order, Proconsul Tomalak?”

  “An order?” Tomalak said, stepping toward the table and forcing a thin smile onto his face. “No, of course not,” he lied. “But the complexities of these negotiations have required a great deal of time and effort. I would hate to see them derailed in haste, particularly for such a minor offense.”

  “It is not a ‘minor offense,’” Corskene protested. “It marks a pattern of behavior. Indeed, the Tzenkethi Coalition was late to the treaty.” When first approached about the possible alliance, the Tzenkethi had declined—at least until the Federation had hired the Breen to help protect against the Borg, something the Tholian Assembly itself had intended to do, and which the Tzenkethi viewed as an example of Federation imperialism.

  “The Tzenkethi were not late,” said Tomalak. “They were simply the last to agree to join the Pact. That differs from not appearing at the appointed time for a summit. In any case, the Tzenkethi vessel carrying their representative has docked at the station. I’m sure we can expect her shortly.”

  “I need not point out that the time scheduled for the start of our meeting has already passed,” said Corskene.

  “No,” hummed the Breen ambassador, Vart, “you need not.”

  Corskene turned her sterile gaze toward Vart, who wore an environmental suit with a snout-nosed helmet, which, as best Tomalak could tell, all Breen wore when away from their homeworld. An uncomfortable silence suddenly filled the room as the Tholian appeared to measure Vart. With the Breen’s words passing through the electronic transmitter of his helmet, and then through a language translator, Tomalak could not tell whether he’d intended his comment as agreement with Corskene, or as criticism of her complaints; the proconsul suspected that Corskene could not tell either.

  Just as Tomalak prepared to step in to prevent any sort of quarrel from erupting, the circular door to the conference room wheeled into the bulkhead. All eyes turned toward the entrance as the silence in the room lingered. The Tzenkethi representative stepped inside.

  Alizome stood tall and lean, humanoid in every respect, but not just humanoid. Like all Tzenkethi, she embodied physical perfection in a way that defied explanation. The bodily proportions of every member of her species seemed without flaw, their movements graceful and languid. They possessed bones only along their spines, the rest of their skeletons instead consisting of differentiated, fluid-filled sacs that could keep their forms rigid, but that also allowed for a considerable range of motion in their limbs and digits. Their large, colored pupils—in Alizome’s case, bright green pupils—filled their eyes, endowing their faces with a striking appearance. And their flesh—

  Although Tomalak had encountered a number of Tzenkethi throughout his life, he had never grown accustomed to the soft radiance that emanated from them. He didn’t know whether their luminescence resulted from a chemical or an electromagnetic process. Nor did he know of any definite limits to their range of colors, though he had only witnessed Tzenkethi radiating from a pale yellow to a midrange green. Alizome shined a stunning golden hue.

  Perhaps most amazingly, the corporeal Tzenkethi form inspired awe in a broad range of other species. Tomalak himself felt their allure, but he had seen individuals of such physically disparate races as the Tellarites, the Terixans, the Koltaari, and even the Klingons, exhibit similar attraction. As if in voiceless testimony of that reality, none of those present in the conference room spoke, all of them—Tomalak included—apparently bewitched by the app
earance of a woman with whom they had dealt on numerous other occasions.

  Obviously accustomed to such reactions, Alizome addressed the group. “You are all here,” she said matter-of-factly. “Good. Let us finalize the agreement to join forces.” Though the words that emerged from Tomalak’s translator sounded straightforward, they came tempered by the lyrical nature of Alizome’s voice, which conjured the sound of wind chimes.

  At last, somebody else spoke. “You’re late,” said Corskene, not hiding her disapprobation.

  Alizome turned her head slowly to look directly at the Tholian ambassador. “I am not interested in your tiresome grievances,” said the Tzenkethi, her musical tones unable to mask the harshness of her statement.

  “And I am not interested in your disrespect,” said Corskene. Rather than continuing the argument, though, she signaled her capitulation by returning to her seat, sending her six legs around the disk and then settling her body atop it. The Kinshaya representative, Patriarch Radrigi, sat in the same way on his seat, though he had only four legs.

  Alizome walked slowly to the conference table, moving with a delicate elegance. She sat down on an unoccupied disk as any bipedal humanoid typically would, but then pulled her legs up onto the seat as well, curling them around the left side of her torso. The shift in position gave her the appearance of having been cut in half, and yet she retained her appeal.

  Tomalak sat down as well. He picked up his data tablet from the table and activated it with a touch of his left index finger to the security scanner. He quickly glanced at the document that appeared. “I can start,” he told the others, “by stating that the praetor has agreed to the sharing of our cloaking technology.”

  “Excellent,” said Skorn, the Gorn Ambassador. The Tzenkethi and Breen representatives nodded their accord, and the Kinshaya flared his wings slightly to indicate his approval. Corskene gave no visible sign of her assent, but Tomalak felt certain that his news pleased her.