by David Mack
Then, before his emotions could cloud his resolve with doubt and fear, he jumped into the shaft and plummeted into free fall. Inside his torso the spindle whirred like a revving engine, filling the shaft with a crisp buzzing as it fed out slack without resistance. He drifted toward the wall and pushed off with a gingerly press of his toes. Noting the rapidly decreasing distance to the top of the parked elevator car, he engaged the braking mechanism on the spindle, which whined in protest even as it slowed his descent and then arrested it at the exact moment his feet touched down atop the elevator. He locked down the spindle, reached inside himself, and, in a coordinated action, retracted its anchoring pins with his mind and pulled it free with his hand.
Liberated from his body, the spool—which still had more than a hundred meters of wire on it—dangled from its slack. As Data lowered himself through the elevator car’s open top hatch, he made a mental note to retrieve the spool later.
Assuming I survive.
Banishing pessimism from his thoughts, he drew his phaser and pressed onward, hoping for the president’s sake that he could reach her in time.
• • •
Worse than the anticipation of what might be coming, Bacco decided, was the simple fact of not knowing what was happening. Chatter over her agents’ in-ear transceivers was barely audible, and the safe room was completely insulated from everything outside, including sound. She considered asking Wexler for an update, but he and Kistler seemed intently focused on monitoring the actions of their comrades outside the safe room.
Sozzerozs startled her with a whisper so close she felt his warm breath on her ear. “Perhaps we should have retreated rather than fortified.”
“If that was an option, we’d have done it,” she said in the same hushed tone. “As fast as these intruders are moving, they’d almost certainly have caught us in transit.”
Wexler held up his hand and shushed them. “Something’s happened.” He pressed his hand to his ear. “Falcon, this is Eagle. Do you copy? . . . All units, this is Eagle. Respond.”
Beside him, the senior Gorn imperial guard muttered a string of untranslated guttural commands into his wrist comm. He, too, received no reply. He looked at his peer, and the two archosaurs lifted their weapons and braced them against their bare, scaly shoulders. The ranking guard looked back at Sozzerozs, Togor, and Azarog. “I recommend you get down, my lords.”
The imperator did as advised, pressing into a corner of the safe room’s rear wall and crouching low. Togor and Azarog moved with him but remained standing to shield him.
Sonorous vibrations coursed through the floor, and within seconds Bacco realized that the source of the tremors was the room’s ponderous metal door—its magnetic locks were being released and its bolts retracted. Her two protection agents traded grave looks, then lifted their own rifles and set themselves into combat postures. Over his shoulder, Wexler said, “Madam President, you might want to follow the imperator’s lead.”
There was no time to argue, no time to think—the door was starting to open. Bacco, Enaren, and Safranski retreated to the back of the room and huddled into the opposite corner from the Gorn. Further emulating their partners in distress, Enaren and Safranski did their best to position themselves between Bacco and whatever was about to come through the door.
Smoke billowed into the safe room as the door opened wide enough for air to move past it. The imperial guards and protection agents took that as their cue to start firing through the widening gap. Bacco covered her ears to block out the piercing shrieks of energy weapons. They continued firing as the door swung away, until at last it was fully open, and the four of them seemed to fill the narrow passageway outside the safe room with a wall of fire.
Two bolts of blue-white energy flew in from a low angle and felled the pair of Gorn. As the archosaurs collapsed, their chests hollowed and scorched, their limbs twitching, another blue-white salvo slammed into Kistler and Wexler. Both men were hurled backward and struck the steel floor with their eyes open but lifeless, and their rifles clattered away, just out of reach.
Then came footsteps unlike any Bacco had ever heard: hard and metallic, uneven and scraping. Two monstrous shapes, walking skeletons with eyes of fire, limped down the hallway, silhouetted by firelight as they lurched forward through smoke and shadow.
Togor sprang forward to seize a rifle from one of the imperator’s fallen defenders. Safranski tensed, as if to make a leaping bid for Wexler’s weapon.
One of the skeletons raised a pistol and snapped off a shot with casual ease, and the top half of Togor’s head vanished in a flash of light and heat, followed by a sickening stench. Safranski backed down, apparently not willing to test his luck or his reflexes against such odds.
The killers emerged from the smoke. It was clear the androids had suffered horrendous damage—they were dented and scorched, one of them was missing a foot, and the other had lost its lower jaw—but they remained intimidating enough that no one in the room dared to move as the duo crossed the threshold into the safe room.
For a moment the androids stood, disruptor pistols in hand, studying the room. Bacco wondered if they were deliberating whether they needed to kill everyone, or just the heads of state. Then she stood, determined not to meet her end on her knees, cowering like a child.
Sozzerozs also rose up to his full height, as if daring the androids to execute him.
One-Foot took aim at the imperator, and No-Jaw pointed his weapon at Bacco.
Waiting for the end to come, she realized she was more angry than afraid.
Shots were fired, and the safe room filled with blinding light.
No-Jaw sank to its knees, its guts smoldering with reddish fire, its eyes dark and lifeless.
One-Foot spun to return fire at someone behind it. A man sprang from the smoky darkness and slapped the weapon from the android’s skeletal hand. The weapon clattered across the floor as the skeleton grappled with its attacker, landing blows that Bacco thought would be fatal—but her rescuer fought on, hammering the android with brutal punches and elbow strikes. Then he snared the mechanical terror in a jujitsu-style hold, twisting its body and tackling it to the floor. He jabbed his hand through a recessed panel beneath the android’s metallic ribcage, thrust his fingers sharply upward—and the android went limp. Its eyes dimmed and went dark.
The hero of the hour stood and turned toward Bacco and Sozzerozs—revealing the exposed mechanical parts of his own ravaged face and head. Despite herself, Bacco recoiled, and Sozzerozs hissed with alarm. Holding up his empty hands, the last android standing spoke with an almost comical degree of formality. “Madam President, Lord Imperator: There is no cause for alarm.” He lowered his hands. “I am Lieutenant Commander Data, U.S.S. Enterprise.”
23
It felt strange to see fellow Breen without their armor and masks, but Thot Konar knew these were special circumstances whose importance outweighed the Breen’s greatest cultural taboo. He stood between the last two functioning uplink pods as their lids lifted open like a beetle’s wings, hinged at the end nearest the obsidian uplink transmitter, whose violet inner fires baked the isolated chamber with a steady dry heat.
Berro, a golden-furred Fenrisal, sat up inside Uplink Pod One, his tongue dangling beneath his snout, his nostrils flaring with each labored breath. “I need a drink.” His paw-like hands gripped the sides of his gray cocoon, in which he’d dwelled for the last hundred-odd days.
Ninety degrees around the transmitter, in Uplink Pod Two, sat Olar. The burly, broad-shouldered Paclu palmed a heavy sheen of perspiration from his bald, four-lobed, pale blue head. “And I thought it was hot when you stuck us into these things.” He groaned and rubbed his neck.
“Welcome back,” Konar said. “You’ve both performed magnificently.”
His compliment drew a homicidal glare from Berro. “No thanks to you.” He continued through bared fangs. “We could’ve finished it, you know. We had every advantage.”
“Be grateful. If I had
n’t intervened, you’d have ruined everything.”
The confrontation put Olar on his guard. “Berro? What happened?”
“After you went down, I still had a shot. And I’d have taken it—but my hand froze.” Hate blazed in his eyes as he glared at Konar. “I couldn’t fire. Then something forced me to go to close quarters against the Starfleet android. Even then, I still might’ve had a chance, if my proprioceptors hadn’t been cut.”
Konar said nothing; he hadn’t come to argue.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Olar said. “We’d taken a lot of damage.”
Berro’s ears flattened against his head, a sign of anger. “No. I know exactly what my operational status was. I was banged up but battle-ready. The only explanation for what happened is that someone here cut my connection before I could finish my mission.”
“You accomplished your mission the moment you entered the safe room.”
Olar seemed almost ashamed to speak up. “Negative, sir. My avatar was terminated before I could fire, and it sounds like Berro was—”
“What did you two think your mission was?”
The two agents stole wary glances at each other. It was clear they sensed they had been challenged with a trick question. Berro answered, “You ordered us to enter the Bank of Orion by force and assassinate the Federation president and the Gorn imperator.”
“Had that been your true objective, you’d both be eternal heroes of the Confederacy.” Konar spread his arms in salute. “Instead, you’ve made possible an even greater victory.”
A pall descended as the two agents began to grasp the implications of Konar’s praise. Olar’s face remained blank as he swallowed, betraying his alarm. “If our real objective wasn’t to assassinate the two leaders . . . what was it?”
“Unfortunately, the two of you aren’t cleared for that information.”
Berro sniffed, apparently having caught a scent in the air. He leaned to his right to look past Konar, through the open airlock and down the long corridor beyond—at the end of which lay Hain’s corpse, most of her back reduced to a concave disruptor scorch. Olar followed his partner’s gaze and noted the dead body with a stare of cold, stupid terror.
Konar shrugged. “All part of the plan, I’m afraid. As for you two . . .” He stepped back and aimed his disruptor at the naked agents. “Let’s just say we have one more job for you.”
• • •
Only under the rarest and most dire of circumstances could the Imperial Guard take action without regard for the wishes of their imperator, but an ages-old decree by the Nizora had imbued them with the authority to act preemptively to defend the life of their leader, even when he did not wish to be saved. So it had been this day, when Hazizaar, returning too late to defend Sozzerozs from the androids’ pell-mell assault, had exercised his right to spirit the imperator clear of further peril for the good of the Hegemony.
Sozzerozs had protested, of course. He had demanded to remain, insisting, “My mission here is not yet finished!” None of that had mattered to Hazizaar. The only relevant fact now, he’d said, was that the attack the imperator had miraculously survived had also proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the Bank of Orion was nowhere near so defensible nor impregnable as its executives had led the Imperial Guard to believe. If the location was not secure, then as far as Hazizaar was concerned, the summit was over. He was taking the imperator home.
Within minutes of their rescue by the Starfleet android Data, Imperator Sozzerozs and Zulta-osol Azarog had been beamed back aboard the battleship Hastur-zolis, along with the body of Togor. Less than a minute later, the Gorn warship had left orbit of the Orion homeworld and jumped to warp speed.
The first thing Sozzerozs did was power up his encrypted subspace transmitter and send a priority signal to Domo Brex of the Breen Confederacy. It is time he and I spoke in person.
Simmering with rage, Sozzerozs waited more than a minute to see some confirmation that his signal had been received and acknowledged. Every moment’s delay only added to his wrath. At last, he saw the emblem of the Breen Confederacy: a crimson eye with slim dagger-like triangles above and below, and two pairs of curving tusk-like shapes on either side of the eye, one swooping upward, the other downward.
It blinked away, revealing a figure cloaked in the traditional anonymizing armor of the Breen. At once he knew it was not Brex, whose armor and mask were singularly distinctive, gold with red and black accents. This individual was dressed in gray-green armor, and his matching mask was adorned by a wide black stripe bordered in silver. “Greetings, Imperator.”
“I will deal with you soon enough, Thot Tran. Let me speak to the domo.”
Tran’s snout-shaped mask dipped, implying condescension. “I regret the domo is indisposed, Lord Imperator. He asked me to speak with you on his behalf.”
Sozzerozs hissed. “And by what right do you address me?”
“Forgive me, Lord Imperator. I am merely carrying out the stated orders of my domo, who sends you his deepest thanks and his most sincere condolences for the deaths of Nizor Szamra and Wazir Togor.”
He tried not to show his hatred, but his lips curled back, exposing his fangs. “Are mere words supposed to excuse the murders of my kin? How dare you use us as pawns.”
“I seem to recall you and your courtiers were willing participants in our deception.”
His taloned digits curled into fists. “Your ambassador neglected to mention you would be treating us as targets.”
Tran shrugged and spread his arms. “Please accept my regrets, Lord Imperator. These sacrifices were necessary—and not merely for the sake of verisimilitude.”
“What reason could you possibly have for treating us as if we were expendable?”
The Breen folded his hands together. “Since the inception of the Typhon Pact, your Hegemony has been our alliance’s weak link. If I may be frank, your past accords with the Federation are a source of concern. Had we not put you up to this summit as a ruse, we suspect you would eventually have sought out such a meeting in earnest. Now, if you or one of your successors should ever entertain that notion, you will have to remember this fiasco—and know that the Federation will be extremely reluctant to ever take you at your word again. So don’t think of this as a betrayal, my lord. Consider it our preemptive investment in your loyalty.”
Sozzerozs imagined seizing Tran’s masked head and twisting it off his body with a wet and satisfying crack of breaking bone. And I thought I couldn’t hold the Breen in greater contempt. “You didn’t trust us to keep our word of honor? That’s what all this was about?”
Tran chortled and shook his head. “Far from it, Lord Imperator.”
• • •
Awash in moist heat and crimson light, Sozzerozs was as close to relaxed as he had felt since before traveling under false pretenses to Orion. The imperator stretched supine across a basking stone in his private quarters. Across from him, Azarog luxuriated on the stone that until that day had been reserved for Togor. Sozzerozs turned his head to regard the logy Azarog.
“Tell me your thoughts regarding the Rigellian, Safranski.”
After a slow blink, Azarog turned his head toward Sozzerozs. “He says little, but when he speaks, he argues to win. He’s direct. Unconcerned with trifles.” He paused for a slow rattling exhalation. “Unlike the Betazoid, he did not smell of fear.”
“I took much the same measure of Bacco.” Dark thoughts plagued the imperator. “What I am about to tell you is a vital state secret. I must have your vow of secrecy and faith.”
Azarog sat up slowly and faced him. “I swear it upon my life, Imperator.”
Sozzerozs sat upright and mirrored Azarog’s pose. “Our invitation to the Federation may have begun as a ploy, a diversion to aid the Breen—but in the end I think it became much more.” He leaned forward. “The androids who tried to kill us were agents of the Breen. Our so-called allies were prepared to sacrifice us for their own gain—and to ensure the Federation would neve
r again accept our bond of honor. The Breen sought to shed our blood as they made liars of us.”
The news brought Azarog to his feet. “How shall we answer their treachery?”
“I promise you, Azarog: the Breen will pay dearly for this betrayal. But now is not the time for us to become careless. Too much depends upon us.” He felt Azarog’s gaze as he padded across the compartment to a transparent metal viewport that looked out at the cold reaches of the cosmos. “Open a clandestine channel to the Rigellian, Safranski. Make him and his president understand that we will earn back their trust. I will have Gozorra provide you with intelligence regarding the Breen; I want you to share it with the Federation.”
With caution, the zulta-osol sidled up to Sozzerozs. “I will obey, Lord Imperator—but I would be negligent if I failed to counsel you that such a breach of our pledge to the Pact could have dire consequences—not only for us personally, but for the Hegemony itself.”
“I’m aware of the risks. But this is what has to happen.” He turned and looked Azarog in the eye. “We joined the Pact because I let avarice and envy cloud my judgment. But what I saw on Orion showed me who our true friends are. I led our people down this ignoble path; I will lead us back to righteousness.” He looked back out at the stars and envisioned the shape of the future. “I know we can’t withdraw from the Pact yet—but soon, with help from the Federation, we will free ourselves from this yoke of iniquity. And on that day, Azarog . . . honor will be served.”
24
It took all of La Forge’s willpower not to wince as he peeled the blackened flesh off the back of Data’s neck to make way for a temporary dermal graft. “You’re sure this doesn’t hurt, Data?”
“Quite sure.” Like a child in a barber’s chair, Data remained absolutely still on the sloped worktable, while Worf paced slowly behind La Forge. “I register the pressure of contact, but I have been programmed not to react to cosmetic damage in the same way organic beings do.”
