“Hey, Thad!” Will had a smile in his voice. “Are you getting into mischief?”
“No!” The boy’s fib was so unequivocal that Troi and Talov both raised an identical, quizzical eyebrow. “I’ve been doing lots of exploration,” he declared.
“I don’t doubt it.” Her husband knew full well what that meant. “Well, listen to your mom and make sure you pay attention to everything. I want a full report when I see you next, okay?”
“Okay, Captain Dad.” Thad slipped off the crate, catching sight of some of the other children. He dashed off, leaving the adults to their conversation.
“Sir, if I may?” Talov spoke up. “What is the status of the ship’s sickbay?”
“McCreedy’s people are going deck by deck,” he noted. “Sickbay is top of the list for full decontamination, right after main engineering. Our repairs are on schedule.”
Something else out beyond the glassy roof of the dome glittered in the glow of distant suns, and Troi caught sight of the Othrys. The Romulan ship moved with the Titan, both of them cruising alongside the Jazari vessel in a companionable formation.
“How about our colleagues from across the Neutral Zone?”
“Interesting times,” admitted Riker. “Ranul has caught them trying to run high-density neutrino-beam scans through our hull a half-dozen times now. They’re not wasting the opportunity to give a Luna-class starship a good once-over.”
“Are we returning the favor?”
Her husband chuckled. “I think if Commander Vale had her way, we’d have an EVA team out there scraping samples off their hull. For now, we’re just keeping a weather eye on them.”
“I will confess,” said Talov, “despite the fact that the Romulan people and my own share a common ancestry, I find their overly secretive behavior perplexing. Such a worldview can only, ultimately, be self-defeating. Given their changed circumstances, they should abandon it.”
“A Romulan without an agenda…” Troi mused on the idea. “I don’t think they could do without that.”
“The Klingons changed their attitude toward outsider species when the destruction of the Praxis moon forced their hand,” noted Talov, “and they have retained the character of their people. I believe the Romulans could do the same in the face of the supernova threat, if they so choose.”
“And there’s the rub,” said Riker. “If they choose, Doctor. I don’t know if they could. Commander Medaka seemed genuine to me, but even he’s holding something back…”
Troi had sensed the same thing. “At least we can be clear about Major Helek’s motivations. Medaka’s executive officer obviously hates Starfleet and everything the Federation stands for.”
“You think so? I didn’t notice,” her husband deadpanned, then he sighed. “I think I need a different set of eyes on this, Deanna.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to call an old friend for some advice. Stay safe. Titan out.”
“I do not follow the captain’s intention,” said Talov.
“Let’s just say, we have a mutual acquaintance who has a lot of experience with this sort of thing…” Troi trailed off as she noticed that her son, and all of his friends, had vanished into the undergrowth.
Talov noted the same. “It appears your son has gone ‘exploring’ once again, Commander.”
* * *
Major Helek returned to her quarters and locked the door, before sweeping the rooms for surveillance gear. This was a ritual she performed every night before going to sleep or—as now—if a matter of urgency had come to light.
Her scanner wand showed a solid blue glow, indicating no detections. She hid the device back in its secure compartment, behind a painting of the Gal Gath’thong firefalls, and activated her masking module once more, to be doubly secure. Then, with the lights dimmed, Helek went to the portable screen on her desk.
“Ready,” said the voice of the ship’s computer system.
“Recognize me,” she ordered.
“You are Major Helek,” it replied, “first officer aboard the warbird Othrys.”
Helek gave a series of commands that she knew by rote. “Access deep memory. Locate a subcluster with the identity nine-one-six-green-two and activate the contents.”
“No such subcluster exists—” The synthetic voice suddenly stopped as a hidden ghost program was triggered. After a moment, it began again. “Subcluster nine-one-six-green-two active and running. Root access now granted to ship systems, by the order of the Tal Shiar. What is your command?”
The major smiled to herself. With this, she could remotely control all but the most critical of the Othrys’s primary functions. The Tal Shiar embedded these secret access codes in the mainframes of every Romulan vessel, in the event that their agents would need to influence the operation of a serving starship. They were a last-resort tactic, limited in usefulness and generally frowned upon as inelegant. But they could be a valuable tool.
“Tie in to the subspace communications array. Open a covert channel on this frequency.” Helek manually tapped a string of digits onto the portable screen. “Block all indicators to other stations aboard this ship and erase all evidence of the transmission once it has been completed. Confirm.”
“Stand by.” A moment later, it spoke again. “Warning! User-designated frequency has not been authorized by the Tal Shiar. No such receiver node exists.”
“Oh, it exists,” she said to herself, then addressed the computer again. “Override and transmit. Authorization: Zhat Vash.”
The device gave a strangled squeal as conflicting programs within it were nullified. “Confirmed.”
For a long moment, the cabin remained dark and silent. Then a figure beneath a hood became barely visible on the screen, the vague outline of a Romulan face concealed in the gloom.
“What is the Admonition?” said a voice. It had been rendered genderless and unidentifiable, scrubbed of all indicators until it seemed more artificial than that of the Othrys’s computer system. That was, in a way, an amusing irony.
“It is the end of all we know,” said Helek, speaking the response like a mantra.
“And what must be done to prevent it?”
She gave the next counterphrase. “Anything and everything.”
The hooded head bowed slightly. “Speak, sister, with clarity and alacrity. This channel will not remain open for long.”
With quick, spare description, Helek relayed what the scientist Vadrel had told her about the likelihood of artificial life being aboard the Jazari generation ship.
As she spoke, it was as if she were giving reality and dimension to this possibility. Helek’s pale hands tightened unconsciously, her body tensing as if she were about to step into a fighting ring.
In her mind’s eye she saw the horrifying potentiality of the thinking machines, their monstrous blank faces and dead artificial eyes. She remembered the nightmares she still experienced, of organic life erased from existence and a synthetic Armageddon consuming all of Romulan space and everything beyond. She re-experienced a shadow of the terrifying visions the Zhat Vash had shown her, there on the pallid sands of an alien world, and for a moment, Helek felt the faint pull of madness dragging on her. Others who had been there had not survived the experience, driven insane by it, preferring to take their own lives rather than live with what they had glimpsed. She had been strong enough to survive it—but something in her mind had broken that day, a fracture forming in her psyche that could never be mended.
In a way, there were two Sansar Heleks. The woman she had been before she experienced the power of the Admonition had been a dedicated, ruthless, unswerving patriot. The woman she was now still possessed those qualities, but with a zealot’s willingness to cross any line and commit any act.
When her report ran out of words, the major found herself short of breath, her heart racing.
“This discovery, if true, is of grave import,” said the hooded figure. “The Zhat Vash cannot suffer the machine to l
ive. If the Jazari are hiding synthetics aboard their vessel, we must take steps.”
“I am alone out here,” she began. “How should I—”
“We are all alone,” the voice replied. “But we are united against the threat.”
“Yes, of course. What are your orders?”
“Act with care. You have trained your whole life for this moment, Sansar Helek, sister of the Zhat Vash. Confirm Vadrel’s findings. If the scientist is correct… all trace of the synthetics must be destroyed. Whatever the cost.”
“There may be complicating factors,” she said, after a moment. “A Federation starship is in close proximity.”
“Whatever the cost,” repeated the voice.
“Very well.” Helek inhaled deeply, moderating her breathing. “I will need disinformation to cover my actions.”
“Provisions will be made,” came the reply. “We have done this many times. We are prepared.”
Helek nodded. “We will do what needs to be done. Anything and everything.”
* * *
“It’s the leafhoppers,” said Moritz, drawing a big hand through his dark hair. “They’re back in the top field. If we don’t deal with them soon, they’ll spread.”
He was a portly man, with the kind of ruddy and rotund physique that would have you imagining him out of breath after taking ten steps, but he was fitter than he appeared. Throughout the morning, the affable Belgian agronomist had been at work all over the place, grubbing in the soil, popping up in between the growing lines of the vineyard. He seemed to have boundless energy, a quality that Jean-Luc Picard—if he were honest—found equally admirable and wearing.
Picard frowned, looking back in the direction of the chateau, finding the nearest of the gardener drones where it drifted on antigravs above the rows of greenery. “Do I need to change the mix in the spray again?”
Moritz gave a typically wide shrug. “It couldn’t hurt, monsieur. Have you thought about using subsonics to discourage them?”
Picard tapped his earlobe. “Too bothersome. I hear it in my sleep.” In truth, the noise reminded him too much of the low, ever-present hum of warp engines.
“Oh.” Moritz stared past his shoulder at something. “And I suppose it is disturbing for your, ah, staff? With their, ah, sensitivity?”
“Romulan hearing is much more sensitive than that of humans,” said a voice from behind him, and Picard turned to see Laris approaching, cupping a small electronic device in one hand. She was still a dozen meters away, but she heard everything they said. Back up by the main path, he could see her partner, Zhaban, taking in the day as if he were out on a constitutional. They were never far apart, those two.
Moritz colored slightly, and suddenly he didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. Picard had often seen this kind of behavior in humans who were confronted by his offworlder friends. A directionless discomfort at close proximity to a being from a race humans had been raised to call an enemy. Moritz was a decent fellow, and Picard doubted he harbored any ill will toward Laris and Zhaban, but the man was still distinctly uneasy in their presence.
It is guilt, he thought. It is easy to put the Romulan crisis out of mind when you don’t have to meet one of them.
“I’ll, ah, put together some notes for you, and send them to your system. Suggestions.” Moritz bent to gather up his geo-tricorder and soil samplers, and set off back toward his aircar with unseemly haste. “Au revoir!”
“I make him nervous,” Laris said quietly as she stepped up to Picard’s side. “I think he’s a little afraid of me.”
“Well, then he is a shrewd judge of character.” Picard eyed her with mild amusement. The Romulan refugees who lived and worked at his vineyard were both excellent students of viticulture, but that wasn’t their primary skill set. “You are one to be wary of.”
The woman fingered some of the vines, returning his smile. “These days, my only adversaries are the leafhoppers, the little sods.”
Not for the first time, Picard wondered where Laris had picked up her predilection for a certain Terran vernacular, but he decided that was a thread from the ex-spy’s past he didn’t want to pull on. Before Picard had offered them sanctuary at his home in the French countryside, both Laris and Zhaban had been agents of the Tal Shiar, engaged in a covert mission on a Romulan colony called Yuyat Beta. Nothing about that operation had gone the way it was expected to, not for the Romulans or for then-Admiral Jean-Luc Picard. But in the end it had borne out a new friendship—and that, Picard reflected, was far better than the alternative.
“Do you have need of me for something?” He was supposed to be working on the next chapter of his book, but the light of the day had drawn him away from the dusty corridors of history and out among the vines. Picard felt an impulse he couldn’t put into words, a compulsion to be walking where things were growing and living, not hemmed in among the static tomes piled high in his study.
“You left your communicator back at the house,” she told him. “An accidental oversight, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” he lied.
Laris offered him the device she was holding. “Someone wants to speak to you.” It was a portable holographic emitter pod, capable of relaying a three-dimensional image from a subspace communications grid.
Picard’s temperament soured. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Mood’s a thing for cattle and love-play,” she chided. “Take it. You’ll change your mind.” Laris dropped the pod into his open palm and started back toward Zhaban.
He eyed the device warily, and almost stabbed the disconnect key the moment he saw the Starfleet delta indicator on the transmission header. But then he saw the originating location: U.S.S. Titan, Beta Quadrant.
Picard activated the connection and the pod floated up out of his hand, sketching in a human figure beneath it from its glowing holo-projector matrix. In a few moments, the haze of photons became a familiar face. “Will!”
“Admiral.” Riker inclined his head. At his end of the communication, he was probably seeing a limited view of Picard’s surroundings. “I’m not interrupting you in the middle of something, am I?”
“Not at all, not at all.” Picard felt a surge of warmth at the sight of his former first officer. “Is everything all right? Deanna and Thaddeus—?”
“Both fine. They’re on a field trip, you could say.”
“This is unexpected,” he admitted, “but welcome. Dare I ask how you got clearance for the energy cost for a call like this?”
“You know how it goes. Captain’s prerogative, right?”
His smile turned bittersweet. “I suppose so.”
“You look well. How’s life in the country treating you?”
Picard made his way along the lines of vines, the holo-pod drifting obediently at his side. “Oh, the pace is hectic. I spend most of my days hunting down garden pests and avoiding my editor’s calls about the history book I’m writing.”
“History?”
“Yes. A study of the events surrounding the incident at Station Salem One,” he explained. “If I ever get it finished. The most exciting thing I have to report is that someone sent me a puppy.” He tried to keep his tone light, but the sullenness was creeping in. He changed tack. “How goes the mission?”
“That’s why I’m calling,” said Riker. “I assume this is a secure line?”
“Of course, but I doubt anyone is listening in on a grumpy old fool in a field.”
“I need your advice on something, sir. I have a situation here and quite frankly, I’m not sure how best to proceed.”
As Picard walked down the path between the ranks of vines, Riker sketched in an outline of the Titan’s current circumstances: the Jazari exodus, the accident, and the Romulan encounter. He took it all in, absorbing the information.
For a moment, the present fell away and he imagined himself on the bridge of the Enterprise in the same circumstances, facing the same challenges. How would Captain Jean-Luc Picard have handled it?
He eyed Riker’s holo-image. “You’ve dealt with the Romulans before. What makes this time different?”
“It’s them,” said the other man. “I can’t articulate it, it just feels different. Things behind the scenes have changed on the other side of the Neutral Zone, and we’re just seeing the ripples from it.”
“Indeed.” Picard halted at the end of the row. “Their civilization is facing an extinction-level event. Some of them will dig in and become more Romulan than they ever were before, and others… like this man Medaka, they may become more open.”
“If he’s on the level, that is.” Riker sighed. “He could be playing us.”
“Good cop, bad cop.” The other man frowned at the idiom, and Picard smirked. “Something I read in a Dixon Hill novel. Commander Medaka acts as a friend, while his executive officer is the expected enemy.”
“But the reality is, they may both want to put us in jail.” He nodded. “It’s hard to know what to trust. The Romulans have been our adversaries for so long, and we had the perfect opportunity to move past that and forge a friendship… But that moment was lost and I’m not sure we can ever get it back.”
Picard looked up, his face finding the glow of the afternoon sun. “You have to try, Will. They’re not the monolithic culture they pretend to be.” He found Zhaban and Laris off by one of the drone docks, and the two of them turned in his direction. Zhaban offered a wave, and he returned it. Picard’s next words came from the heart, and their quiet power surprised even him. “I have to believe there’s still hope. There must be.” Then he cast off the moment and took a breath. “You know you’ll be in the merde if Vice Admiral Clancy finds out you talked to me about this,” he noted.
“Maybe so. But aside from Deanna, there’s no one else I can go to who knows the Romulans as well as you.”
“There’s always Worf.” Picard’s response was wry, but only half in jest.
“He’s got his hands full with the Enterprise. He doesn’t need another distraction.”
Picard nodded in agreement, pursing his lips as he thought on. “The Romulans will be up to something,” he said. “The cardinal rule with the Star Empire: they’re always up to something. But that doesn’t mean we can’t work with them.” He paused, putting his thoughts in order. “If you want an edge, the best thing to do is be completely honest. If you can, give them the full, absolute, and unvarnished truth. You will wrong-foot them every time. They’re simply not used to it.”
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