by David Mack
“Convenient,” Worf said.
“More like lucky,” La Forge said. Not only did Data’s flesh look real, it felt real—warm with naturalistic body heat, pliant, and just as elastic as real skin. In the past when he had helped Data make repairs to his previous body’s metallic bioplast skin, he had never come close to mistaking it for the real thing. Data’s new exterior, on the other hand, made him wonder if his injuries ought to be treated in sickbay by Doctor Crusher. He focused the bioplast fuser to seal the edges of the graft with minimal scarring. “How long will these patches hold, Data?”
“Several weeks at least.” He rotated one bare arm and frowned at its irregular patchwork of mismatched skin tones. “However, I intend to make permanent repairs as soon as I am able to regain access to my ship.”
Worf stopped pacing. “I have spoken with Ambassador Císol. Federation Security has released your vessel. You may return to Orion to claim it when you are ready.”
Data turned his head toward Worf, interrupting La Forge’s repairs. “That will not be necessary, Commander. If you will grant me permission to dock the Archeus on the Enterprise, I can instruct its AI to file a flight plan and pilot the ship to rendezvous with us in orbit.”
It took the Klingon a second to process that. “Permission granted.”
“Thank you.” He held up one finger to signal La Forge to wait before resuming his work, and he looked away, his focus distant, as if he were gazing through the ship’s bulkheads. A few seconds later, his mood brightened. “My ship is en route. Its ETA is eleven minutes.”
The first officer shot a curious look at La Forge, then turned half away from him and Data. “Worf to ops.”
Glinn Dygan answered over the ship’s comm, “Ops. Go ahead, sir.”
“Clear the aft hangar and inform the FCO that Mister Data’s vessel is en route from the planet, ETA eleven minutes. It is to be given priority clearance.”
“Understood, sir.”
“That is all. Worf out.” He turned his always fearsome glare upon La Forge. “How long until you finish here?”
“Almost done.” La Forge chose not to be baited into reacting defensively to Worf’s brusque queries. He recognized the first officer’s impatience for what it was: frustration. After waiting a few seconds to make sure Worf didn’t misinterpret his intentions, he said, “You seem like a man with something on his mind, Commander. Anything I can do to help?”
Worf sighed. “I cannot make sense of the attack at the bank.”
La Forge finished his last pass with the fuser and patted Data’s shoulder to let him know he could get dressed. Then he looked at Worf. “What about it’s bothering you?”
The question started Worf pacing again. “The androids used tricobalt explosives to fight their way in. After Data caught them, we found they each had one bomb left. So why did they waste time sniping the defenders? Why risk entering the safe room at all? Once the door was open, they could have tossed in their bombs and guaranteed the deaths of all inside.”
“I don’t know.” This was the first La Forge had heard of the androids carrying unused explosives, and he floundered to rationalize an explanation tailored to fit the facts. “Maybe they were worried about getting hit by the blast wave?”
The first officer shook his head. “The assassins showed no regard for their safety or survival up to that point. And according to the survivors, the attackers hesitated to fire the killing shot. Why would they freeze when victory was within their grasp?”
His question lingered, unanswered, as Data put on his shirt and La Forge put away his tools. In La Forge’s opinion, there was only one logical answer: Because killing the president wasn’t their true objective. But to raise that possibility would invite an even more troubling question he was unprepared to face: Then why did they go to all that effort in the attempt?
He was still pondering the ramifications of that train of thought when his office door slid open, and Lieutenant Elfiki poked her head inside. “Sirs? We’re ready out here.”
“Thanks, Dina,” La Forge said. He ushered Worf and Data out of his office, into the corridor that led to main engineering. At the end of the passageway was the central console, a pair of octagonal tables with interactive surfaces, connected by a pair of back-to-back workstations. Gathered around the console were Elfiki; the ship’s assistant chief engineer, Lieutenant Taurik; and subspace communications specialist Ensign Cyriaque Lamar. La Forge, Worf, and Data settled in at three adjacent stations around one of the octagons. The chief engineer nodded at Elfiki. “What have you got?”
The science officer keyed in commands, pulling up scan results on the linked monitors. “With help from Lieutenant Anders, Ensign Lamar identified the frequency used by the black crystal transceivers inside the android’s head. I connected the transceiver to our main array, which should give us a general idea of where this brain’s signals are coming from.”
“Assuming their control center is still transmitting,” Lamar said. “It’s likely they know we’ve captured at least one of their androids, so it’s possible they might have shut down or changed frequencies, to prevent us from doing what we’re about to try.”
Elfiki glared across the console at Lamar. “Way to stay positive.”
“Let’s just get on with it,” La Forge said. “Power it up.”
He watched as Elfiki keyed in the final activation sequence and brought the captured obsidian transceiver on line. “Okay,” she said, observing the results on her tabletop display. “Right now, we’re in passive-receiver mode. The Argus Array and the Starship Osiris can help us triangulate any signals we pick up, but this might take a while, so just—” Her jaw went slack and her eyes opened wide as the sensor data appeared on her screen.
Her naked shock compelled everyone else to look at their own screens. La Forge almost couldn’t believe what he saw. “Dina . . . did we just find the source of the control signal?”
“Um . . .” She nodded and shrugged. “I think we did.”
Worf indulged his gift for understatement. “That was easy.”
“Yeah,” La Forge said with open suspicion. “Maybe a bit too easy.”
• • •
Picard entered the observation lounge to find Worf, La Forge, Šmrhová, and Data waiting for him. His three senior officers stood on the far side of the conference table, all bearing the same grim frowns. Data stood alone, on the near side of the table, his expression equally grave. Taking his place at the head of the table, Picard cut to business. “What have you found?”
Worf touched a keypad on the tabletop. “This.”
The center screen of the room’s master systems display lit up with a map of local space. A star system was highlighted with a bold red dot.
La Forge nodded at the annotated star chart. “Elfiki and Lamar tapped into the frequency used by the androids and found their control center.” With a nod he cued Šmrhová to continue.
“Pyrithia IV,” the security chief said. “It barely qualifies as Class M. Poor soil and a cold climate made it less than ideal for colonization. It could be terraformed, but so far, no one’s bothered to try. Officially, it’s unpopulated.”
Eyeing the map, Picard was perplexed. “That world lies inside Federation space.”
“Legally,” Data said, “it is a Federation possession. It was formally claimed sixty-eight years ago, in the Federation’s second addendum to the Treaty of Antos.”
Šmrhová called up a pair of green arrowhead symbols. “The starships closest to the Pyrithia system are the Callisto and the Nogura. Both are en route with orders to disrupt the enemy’s control signals and seize control of the base, its assets, and its personnel.”
“Well done,” Picard said. “But I’m not content to leave others to finish what we’ve started. Now that the Atlas has returned to transport the president and her delegation to Cestus III, I want us under way to Pyrithia immediately, and at maximum warp.”
A knowing smirk leavened Worf’s dour visage. “
Course has been plotted and laid in. Ready to execute on your command, Captain.”
Once again, Picard was reminded why he had chosen Worf as his first officer.
“Number One . . . make it so.”
25
To be paralyzed in the sight of his enemies had long been one of Worf’s recurrent nightmares, and there was no moment when he felt so exposed and vulnerable as when he was materializing from a transporter beam en route to a potential combat situation. Engulfed in golden light and white noise, he felt like a brilliant target, a beacon inviting calamity.
The effect faded, sensation returned, and Worf charged.
Šmrhová was at his side, attired in an armored solid-black combat uniform—a relic of the Dominion War—and bracing a phaser rifle against her shoulder. Worf had scorned such accoutrements as crutches, preferring to live or die by his wits, his reflexes, and his courage. His only weapon was a type-2 hand phaser, his only defense a well-honed talent for battle.
Surrounded by security personnel from the Enterprise, the Callisto, and the Nogura, he sprinted forward and easily took the lead. With one shot he blasted the closed portal ahead of the strike team, and when he reached the carbon-scored door, he kicked it in with one mighty thrust of his foot. The deformed sheet of metal broke free, brittle and smoldering, and struck the floor with a dull and hollow bang. Worf was six paces inside the room on the other side, pivoting left and then right in search of a target, before he realized all was deathly still. There was no one there for him to fight—only unmanned computer consoles awash in a torrent of data.
The other members of the strike team flowed past him. In their black field combat uniforms, they were like a dark river coursing past a boulder. It took them less than thirty seconds to fan out ahead of him, leapfrogging past one another while communicating in quick hand signals, before one of them announced, “All clear!”
A stranger’s opinion carried no weight with Worf. He waited until Šmrhová returned and approached him to confide, “The site’s secure. And you need to see what we found, sir.”
“One moment.” He tapped his combadge. “Worf to Enterprise. Beam down Commander La Forge and Mister Data.” Mere seconds after his order, the air shimmered nearby with a new transporter effect, and the engineer and android took shape inside it. As soon as they emerged, Worf nodded to Šmrhová. “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”
The lithe brunette led them through a large and apparently central room packed with computers and monitoring stations that showed all manner of telemetry and vital-systems feedback. It struck Worf as overkill to devote so many systems to monitor only four androids.
Then Šmrhová guided them to a long and narrow passageway. Lying on the floor at its threshold was a single body in a Breen military uniform, still masked. A black scorch had consumed most of its back. “We found traces of two more bodies in the facility’s incinerator,” Šmrhová said, nodding toward a hatchway nearby. “The others are back here.”
Worf, La Forge, and Data followed her down the narrow corridor to an airlock. On the other side of its open double doors was a grisly spectacle: two aliens lay naked inside open pods of unknown function, their faces burned away by what Worf surmised had been point-blank disruptor blasts. The Enterprise’s security chief slung her weapon. “We’ll get you a more precise time of death once the medical unit has a chance to run some tests, but based on my experience, I’d say these two have been dead for less than a day.” She glanced back through the airlock. “The one outside looks like she got killed around the same time. Maybe a bit earlier.”
La Forge seemed entranced by the machine of black volcanic glass surrounded by four cocoon-like pods. As he drifted closer to inspect its features, Data said to Worf, “I am going to review the base’s computer systems and control network.” Worf nodded, and Data left.
Šmrhová continued studying the dead bodies. “This still isn’t making sense. I’ve heard of killing one’s own people to tie off loose ends, but if that was the reason to kill them, why leave their bodies behind to be discovered?”
“For that matter,” Worf said, “why let us find this base? The Breen know how to make self-destruct systems. Why would they let us capture this? How does this help them?”
The security chief shook her head. “I don’t know, sir. But I know I don’t like it.”
“Agreed.” He moved to stand behind La Forge, who was kneeling beside one of the open, empty pods. “Have you found anything new?”
The engineer frowned. “Not really. This core system is definitely Tholian, and these pods have a lot of Romulan parts.” He stood and poked at the pod’s control panel. “And I might not be able to read Breen Standard, but I know it when I see it.” He shrugged at Worf. “It’s a muddle, just like what we found inside the androids’ heads.”
Worf turned and looked back through the airlock. Then he asked Šmrhová, “You said the Breen at the end of the hallway was dead before the two in here were killed?”
She nodded. “That’s our current thinking.”
He looked toward the garbage hatch. “How old were the traces inside the incinerator?”
“Hard to say. A few days at least, I’d think. Why?”
He pointed at the dead bodies. “Neither of these victims was armed. They did not shoot each other, and it could not have been the one outside.” He looked around, half expecting to discover some evidence of a concealed recording device spying on their investigation. “Whoever killed them escaped—and deliberately left this facility for us to find.”
La Forge was strangely chipper. “Good. What they left behind can radically advance our knowledge of cybernetics and Tholian thoughtwave technology. Looks like a win to me.”
Not wanting to spoil La Forge’s moment of discovery, Worf held his criticism and walked away, down the corridor that led back to the central control room.
Šmrhová fell into step beside him and lowered her voice for the sake of discretion. “This is just like the clues we were force-fed on Orion. If the Breen are giving away something like this, they must think they have something even bigger to gain.”
“Precisely.” He stopped, glanced back at La Forge, then looked at Šmrhová. “Rip this lab apart and beam it up to the Enterprise for study. Then, send the bodies to Doctor Crusher for autopsy. Just because the Breen want this to distract us, that does not make it worthless.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.” They resumed walking. “I have a question.”
“Ask.”
“Other than the Changelings, have you ever faced a threat as troubling as remote-controlled, Breen-driven android spies that can impersonate anyone they want?”
Worf pondered the enemies he had faced in his day, including the Borg, the Hirogen, the Jem’Hadar, and even Q. “Very few.”
“Then let me ask you another question: If you had a resource like this to wield against your enemies, what would have to be at stake to make you willing to give it up?”
He didn’t dare speak his answer aloud: Something that would alter the balance of galactic power—and change the shape of the future.
Data called out, “Commander Worf! You need to see this immediately.” The first officer and security chief hurried to Data and each hovered over one of the android’s shoulders. Looking up and back at Worf, Data pointed out details on the screens in front of him. “I have detected a large number of dormant android control signals being received by this facility.” He directed their eyes to a screen showing a star chart that included several adjacent sectors. Scores of star systems in half a dozen sectors were highlighted with triangular red icons. “According to this, there are more than a hundred other android infiltrators on dozens of Federation worlds within fifty light-years of this control center.”
Šmrhová blanched. Worf clenched his jaw and ground his teeth.
“That’s not good,” she said.
“No, it is not.” He tapped his combadge. “Worf to Enterprise.”
Picard replied, “Go ahead, Number On
e.”
“Sir. We need to contact Starfleet Command at once. I believe the Breen may be on the verge of launching an invasion.”
• • •
Littered with loose parts and partitioned by banks of captured computers, the Enterprise’s main cargo bay had been transformed into a testing laboratory. Navigating the labyrinth of hardware, Picard had to mind his step. Stray cables crisscrossed his path and somehow linked all these mismatched alien components into a functioning whole.
Occupying the cargo bay’s perimeter were more than a dozen of the ship’s senior engineering personnel, representing a variety of professional specialties. Most were engaged in hands-on work—moving pieces into place, running cables, or crawling inside open sections of the thrumming machine to work on something inside. A few, including Taurik, the ship’s assistant chief engineer, roamed from one engineer to the next, to ask questions, offer advice, or make entries into the duty logs for their inevitable, exhaustive technical reports.
At the center of the maze stood La Forge. The engineer was surrounded on three sides by display screens, holographic projections, and sprawling command consoles. He alternated between earnest jabs with his right hand at the various panels, and checking the tricorder in his left hand to see if he’d induced the slightest degree of measurable change. Looking up, he noted Picard’s approach with what seemed like relief. “Quite a catch, eh, Captain?”
“An impressive acquisition, Mister La Forge.” He made a show of looking around at the jury-rigged systems. “Are we any closer to knowing the objectives of the hundred-odd androids we detected awaiting orders from this system?”
“Not really. Have they all been located?”
“Yes. Federation Security will have them all in custody within the next twelve hours.”
La Forge frowned. “Then I’d say we lucked out. It sounds crazy, but as far as I can tell, those androids don’t have drivers. They were powered up and brought on line, but with no one to control them, they’re just dead weight. If the Breen had planned ahead, with standby operators and a backup command center, we’d have been in big trouble.”
