by Ilsa J. Bick
Strong said, “Setting the shuttle down at the edge of town was too risky.”
“Yeah,” said Halak, without enthusiasm. He felt moisture evanescing from his neck, and his shoulders jerked with an involuntary shiver. He sopped the back of his neck with his sleeve. “Still too far away.”
“We’ll make it.”
Thex piped up from the back seat. “What I wouldn’t give for an emergency beam-out to the Barker, sir.”
Halak grunted an assent. “No cavalry this time around. We’re on our own until we clear Ryn space.”
“Plausible deniability,” said Strong, making it sound like something obscene. He depressed the throttle, trying to get more speed out of the skimmer. The vehicle lurched and shuddered. “Hope Starfleet Intelligence is happy.”
“Ease off before we come apart,” said Halak.
“Aye, sir,” Strong said. He sucked air then let it out in a long exhalation. “Sorry. It’s just, well, damn it, it seems stupid to have taken this many risks and come away with so little. Waste of time, putting our necks on the line. Felt really close, you know? Like we’re so close to getting something useful on the Syndicate, then our cover gets blown.”
Halak didn’t respond. Strong was right. Ten days wasted, and nothing to show. Hell, they’d be lucky to get off the planet. The ostensible mission had been as deceptively simple as it had been dangerous. Ryn III was one of the Asfar Qatala’s distribution hubs for red ice. The Orion Syndicate was also involved, but Starfleet was still amassing intel on them. Red ice was a secondary concern. The primary goal was to get information on how the Syndicate was currently set up, how it’s network functioned, who controlled what. Follow the money. So, their mission: Pose as independent mercenaries, vie for a piece of the distribution pie, make contact with an operative in the Orion Syndicate. Get the information, and then get the heck off the planet.
The rationale for a trio was also deceptively simple. Three people were, in theory, harder to keep track of than two. If one of them were suspected of being an SI plant, this would take the focus off the other two. At least, that’s what Starfleet Intelligence explained to Thex and Strong. Regrettably, this might lead to one of them being eliminated—SI-speak for very dead. But no one had forced Thex and Strong to volunteer. What SI didn’t bother explaining was that it was also easier for one of them to peel off from the other two and do another mission—the real mission—on the side, without the other two being involved. That’s the rationale that SI—and specifically Commander Marta Batanides—had offered about why Halak, in particular, should volunteer.
Halak didn’t want the mission. He also couldn’t refuse, not when Batanides did an end-around and asked him, again, in front of Captain Connors—not without arousing suspicion. Not without making someone want to take a much closer look at Samir al-Halak, maybe pick apart his past just a teensy bit more. So Halak was stuck. On the one hand, he couldn’t risk SI nosing around more than Batanides, maybe, already had. On the other, he couldn’t risk anyone from the Qatala—or the Syndicate—drawing a bead. True, he’d been a much younger man when he’d had any dealings with either organization. A boy, really: The last time he’d been on Farius Prime he’d been clean-shaven and about ten kilos lighter. Still.
Angling the landskimmer into a narrow valley formed by the cleft of two deep arroyos, Strong said, “I still don’t understand how that happened, sir. The only time all three of us have been in the same room was when we were each trying to outbid the other. We took different rooms, never crossed paths. Secured channels on our communicators so we didn’t even have to meet. Doesn’t make sense they could have figured out who we are, you ask me. Hey, Thex,” Strong angled his head up, talking to the roof, “how did you say they made us?”
“All I know is we were set up for a meet today with the Syndicate representatives. So I’m at the bar, waiting.”
Halak half-turned. “And?”
“Two men—a Ryn and a Naiad—were gossiping with a waitress about how they’d heard there were Starfleet people nosing around about the Syndicate. The waitress dismissed it. Said they didn’t know what they were talking about, that she’d heard the Syndicate hadn’t made the Starfleet people at all, but the Qatala had. Said there were three of them and that a Qatala man, one of the old-timers, recognized one of them.”
Halak felt his stomach bottom out. Damn, damn. Someone had recognized him. That was the only explanation. And he’d been so close ...
“Couldn’t be one of us,” said Strong. His brows mated over the bridge of his nose. “We haven’t had anything to do with the Qatala, just the Syndicate guys. Unless Starfleet Intelligence decided to keep an eye on us, and one of them got made. They do that, you know: spies spying on spies. Anyway, it couldn’t have been us, Thex. You heard wrong.”
“My hearing was perfect,” said Thex. “Is perfect.”
No. Halak chewed on the soft inner flesh of his cheek. Thex hadn’t been wrong; he just didn’t know. Neither did Strong. None of this was about red ice. Marta Batanides had been very clear about Halak’s real mission, one that even Connors didn’t know because if something went wrong, only Halak—and not Starfleet—would take the fall.
This was all about the Cardassians.
The facts. The Cardassians had been on a massive expansion kick for the last decade, from their failed attempt to claim Legara IV in 2327 and their annexation of Bajor in ’28 to their current wrangling with the Klingon Empire for Raknal V. They’d been expanding, flexing their muscles by conquering smaller, non-Federation worlds nudging the border. There was every reason to believe that the Cardassians wouldn’t stop there. But, in order to take on the Federation, the Cardassians needed more and better weapons.
Fact: The Breen made weapons. Good weapons, advanced weapons, such as type-3 disrupters. SI operatives had reports of Breen weapons turning up on Ryn III, probably bound for Cardassia. No one knew for sure.
Fact: well, a rumor, really. The buzz was that the Breen had developed cloaking technology superior to the Klingons. Bad enough. But there were also rumors swirling around that the Breen had succeeded in testing out prototypes of a new weapon designed to dissipate focused phased energy. The upshot? More energy discharge per volley, with greater range and less dissipated radiant energy than current Starfleet technology. Translation: more bang for the buck, and without a lot of spare change.
Fact: The Breen hated dealing with other species, period. The Breen were nonaligned. They were secretive, isolated. Duplicitous. Betazoids couldn’t get a read on them, and the Breen shielded their bodies in refrigerated encounter suits that duplicated the ambient conditions of their frozen waste of a homeworld. One might have been tempted to call them cold-blooded but for the belief that the Breen didn’t have a drop of blood, of any color or description, flowing in their nonexistent veins.
Fact: Profit was profit. If the Breen were going to get at Cardassian wealth, they’d need a middleman.
And that’s where the Syndicate came in. The likely scenario was that the Syndicate provided the Breen with runners and pilots who would do the work, for a very hefty fee, of ferrying weapons bound for Cardassia. In turn, the Syndicate would make sure that any dealings with the Breen were one step removed.
And that’s where Halak came in. Pose as a freelancer. Make contact with a dealer who needed a ship to transport Breen materiel into Cardassian space. Figure out to whom the dealer reported—the Syndicate, or the Qatala—and then get a read on the weapons distribution hierarchy.
Yet, somehow, someone had made Halak. He’d thought Farius Prime was far enough away from Ryn III, but it seemed he’d been wrong.
So who? He cast his mind over the possibilities. The Ryn weapons dealer he discarded on the spot. Halak had funneled data on the weapons dealer back to Starfleet Intelligence on a secured channel and discovered that the man was a native, had never left the planet.
“Well,” he said finally, “what matters now is that we get off the planet and back to the Barker witho
ut the Ryn fleet on our tail. Then we regroup and figure out what went wrong.”
In a few minutes, Strong banked the landskimmer right, and angled into a narrow canyon between high sheer cliffs to which low clumps of scrub clung. Halak scanned the jagged, rocky ridges but saw no one. Then Halak spotted the shuttle, a class two—capacity of four passengers; max speed, warp two. Fast enough. Ryn scouts could only make warp one-point-five. Quickly, his eyes ran over the exterior, looking for signs of damage. There were none.
“All right, go.” Signaling for Strong to kill the engine, Halak snapped open his side of the landskimmer and scrambled out. “Go, go, let’s go.”
They piled into the shuttle, Halak dropping into the pilot’s chair, and Strong into the seat next to him. Thex took over monitoring their onboard systems. After a cursory check, Halak punched the shuttle’s engines.
In a few moments, Ryn III had fallen away beneath them. Halak was never so happy to see the backside of a planet before in his life. Then, two minutes later, as they passed Ryn III’s near moon and went to warp, Thex said, “Something here, Commander.”
Hell. “What? A scout?”
Strong shook his head. “Nothing on external scan. No sign of pursuit.”
“That’s not it,” said Thex. He looked up, his sky-blue features pulled in a frown. “I’m getting a signal.”
“Signal?” asked Halak. Barker’s too far away. They don’t even know we’re off-world yet. “Is it a hail?”
“No, sir, that’s just it. It’s,” Thex’s fingers played over his console, “sir, it’s coming from us.”
“What?” Halak spun around in his chair. “Say again?”
“Us. It’s like we’re sending out a signal.” Thex’s eyes, baby blue like his skin, widened. “A homing beacon.”
“They must have found the ship,” said Strong, the color draining from his face like water from a leaky bucket. His voice was high and tight. “Someone must have found the ship parked around the moon, planted a homing beacon.”
“But who?” asked Thex. “Why not board it? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Worry about what makes sense later,” Halak rapped. “First, we shut it down. Thex, can you jam it?”
“Trying, sir,” said Thex. He gritted his teeth as if a physical effort on his part would, magically, push his commands through. After a moment, he shook his head. His antennae knotted, unfurled. Kinked. “Negative. I can’t. It’s not routed through our communications system. In fact, I’m not sure where ...”
“The engines,” said Halak suddenly. That’s what I would do; make it inaccessible. “Check the engines, the power couplings.”
Thex’s brow crinkled even as he moved to comply. “The engines? I don’t ... got it. Left nacelle, main power coupling. It’s a subspace transponder, Commander, tied into the antimatter injector. No way to disable it without dropping out of warp.”
“Probably programmed to activate when we went to warp.”
“That might explain why we didn’t detect it when Lieutenant Strong brought the shuttle in from its lunar stationary orbit. She came in on quarter-impulse.”
“But who? Thex, can you get a read on ... ?”
“Sir!” It was Strong. “Two unidentified scouts, closing fast!”
Halak whirled around in his chair. “Where?”
“Off the port bow, sir!” Strong’s head jerked up. “Sir, they must have used the same trick.”
“Hiding behind the moon,” said Halak. “Are they Ryn?”
“Negative. They’re way too fast. Coming in at warp five!”
“Thex, what are their weapons?”
“I’m reading type-1 disrupters. We outgun them, sir.”
“Raising shields,” said Halak. He jabbed at his console, and their shields clicked into place. And, thank God, they didn’t deactivate them. “Strong, how much longer before we’re out of the Ryn system?”
“Five minutes, ten seconds.”
“Thex, what about that homing beacon?”
The yellow glare coming from the Andorian’s console had turned his skin a sickly shade of green. “Sorry, sir. No way to kill it.”
“Without killing us,” Halak said. “Cut warp drive, and we’re sitting ducks. All right, everyone hang on. Let’s see if I can shake them loose.”
The starfield outside the shuttle whirled in a dizzying spiral as Halak banked left and then began what, in an atmosphere, would have been a steep, coiling Immelmann turn.
“They’re turning,” Strong reported. “Matching course and speed. They just raised their shields.”
“Come on,” Halak muttered, dropping the shuttle and banking hard right, “come on, come on, cut loose!”
“Still with us!”
“Something here, Commander!” It was Thex. “I’m reading fluctuation in one of those ship’s warp nacelles. There’s been a minute power drop, but it looks like it’s increasing. He’s going to have to drop out of warp, or else the engine ...”
“Sir!” Strong sang out. “They’re powering up weapons! Locking on!”
“Taking evasive maneuvers!” Halak spun the shuttle to port and pushed the vessel into a steep dive. “Hang on!”
“Too late!” Strong shouted.
A second later, the shuttle lurched. Halak cursed and fought with the controls. “Report!”
“Hit to starboard. They missed the nacelle but got a piece of the aft hull. Shields down to eighty-five percent,” said Thex.
“Shall I return fire?” asked Strong, his finger hovering over the targeting computer.
Halak shook his head in a curt negative. “We aren’t here to fight, Strong. We keep up this speed, we’ll cross into neutral space. With any luck, they’ll drop back and ...”
“Firing again!” shouted Thex.
The shuttle shuddered. Thex checked the damage. “Clipped our starboard nacelle. She’s holding!”
“What about shields?”
“Eighty percent!”
“Commander,” Strong gripped the edges of his console, “at least let me return fire, try to scare them off!”
“Negative, negative that!” Halak was thinking fast. He couldn’t take a chance that these were unmarked Ryn scouts. “Our orders are not to engage ...”
“They just jumped speed!” Thex called out. “Now at warp six! They’re gaining!”
“What?” Halak’s heart did a stutter-step. Gaining, it couldn’t be. “Thex, are you sure?”
“Oh, hell.” Strong’s face was shiny with sweat. “Commander, they can’t be Ryn, they can’t! Ryn scouts don’t go that fast! They have to be Syndicate!”
“Well, whoever they are, they’re getting a lock,” Thex warned. “Commander! Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!”
“All right!” Halak snapped. “Strong, one shot! Target the vessel with the faulty antimatter injector. See if you can knock it out of commission and get the other vessel to drop back.”
Strong bared his teeth in a determined grimace. His fingers danced over his targeting controls. “Aye! Targeting port nacelle of the closest ship. Firing ... now!”
There was a momentary flicker of the overhead lights, and Halak imagined he heard the dance and sizzle of the phaser blast licking across space.
“We hit him, we hit him!” Thex’s voice ramped up with excitement. “Direct hit, port nacelle. His shields are down to sixty percent. I’m reading fluctuations in the engine, worse than before, the injector’s ... Sir!” Thex’s stricken gaze found Halak. “Sir, his warp bubble’s collapsing!”
“Oh, God, he’s going to go,” Strong said, instinctively straight-arming the edges of his console. “He’s got a runaway, he’s going to go, he’s going to go!”
“What about the other ship?” Halak demanded. “Are they close enough, can they help?”
“They’re closing in, looks like they might be trying to help, but I don’t think they’re going to make it!”
“Thex, are we within transporter range?”
“
Negative, sir!”
“Do we have time to reach them?”
“Only if you go now, sir, right now!”
“What?” Strong was flabbergasted. “Commander?”
Halak ignored him. “All right! Thex, try to raise them, get them to stand down!”
Strong was at his elbow. “Commander, you can’t, we’ll get too close, we’ll be ...”
“As you were, Lieutenant! I’ll only bring us around once they acknowledge ...”
“Too late!” Thex reported. “She’s breaking up, she’s breaking up!”
Halak had only begun his turn, but it was in time for the space before them to flare white, then red, then yellow as the atmosphere within the smaller ship ignited and bloomed in a fiery shower. A wave front of debris and explosive gases rippled out in ever-widening spheres. Their shuttle shook in the explosive backwash.
There was an instant’s silence in the shuttle. Then, Strong said, without being prompted, “No damage.”
Halak swallowed his disgust with the lieutenant. He’d deal with Strong later. “Thex, what about that other ship?”
“She was too close, Commander,” said Thex. “The explosive backwash knocked out her shields. Her port engine’s damaged, and her inertial dampers are gone. I read environmental systems failure and ...”
Halak heard the dismay in the Andorian’s voice. “What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Imminent cascade reaction in their remaining engine. I estimate two minutes to critical. Their explosive bolts must be frozen, or they’d have blown it clear by now.”
“How many?”
Thex squinted at his readings. “Two life-forms.”
“Ryn?”
“I can’t tell. Too much background radiation from that other ship.”
Halak closed his eyes. “Did they get off a distress signal?” Please, yes, yes.
There was a pause. Then Thex shook his head. “Even if they had, they’re too far out. There’s no way anyone would reach them in time.”
“Lifeboat?”
