But for Burke and Samno, their continued presence became a liability, one big enough to threaten the delicate structure of the conspiracy surrounding the murder of Gorkon.
“Captain Kirk was supposed to engage Kronos One in battle; had we survived that, the Enterprise would have retreated to a nearby Starbase where Burke and Samno would have quietly been reassigned,” explained Valeris. “But things changed.”
“You were ordered to silence them.”
The Vulcan nodded. “Yes. To preserve not only the conspiracy, but also myself. Either man could have revealed my involvement under interrogation. I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Valeris.”
“Spare me the homily, Doctor. Unless you have been in that circumstance, I doubt you could understand.”
Tancreda shook her head. “I understand you despised what you had to do.”
“You would like that to be true.” Valeris slowly got to her feet. “But that would have been an emotional reaction. As you suggested, I killed those men because logic dictated that I do so. I felt nothing.”
The Betazoid took a breath, trying to sense the surface thoughts of the other woman; but all she could detect were shifting walls of denial. “I don’t accept that. I think you want to believe you feel no remorse, but you’re conflicted. You’re afraid to acknowledge it, and you’re burying it deeper and deeper.” She gestured around. “You’re imprisoning your emotions the same way you’ve been imprisoned here.”
“What you do or do not accept is of no concern of mine, Doctor,” said Valeris as she walked away.
3
Starbase One
Sol System
Sector 001, United Federation of Planets
Miller stood at the window of the empty embarkation lounge and let his gaze range around the inside of the spacedock bay, the vast walls like sheets of city skyline spun into an inverted cone. A handful of vessels ranging in size from small scoutships to heavy cruisers drifted at station or docked to mooring arms. The majority of them resembled the familiar design philosophy of warp-streamlined discs and elongated nacelles; only a single terra-cotta-colored courier of Vulcan manufacture stood out among the Starfleet-clean lines of the other craft.
Darius Miller had never had a command of his own, and given his career trajectory it was unlikely that he ever would. Intelligence officers didn’t usually end up on the road to captaincy. Those who made it to senior rank generally found themselves training or supervising the next generation of their kind, working from the sidelines to keep the Federation safe.
Still, looking out at these ships, for a moment the commander recalled a time when he had dreamed about exploration. Like every other cadet at Starfleet Academy, he had been enraptured by the promise of pushing back the boundaries of the vast night. He found himself wondering what had happened to the men and women in his graduating class; none of them worked for SI as far as he knew. None of them had shown the same aptitude for spook work that had seen Miller plucked from his first posting and sent to serve in the shadows.
Do I regret it? The question crossed his thoughts. Perhaps he did, in a small way. But after all he had seen as an intelligence operative, he knew he would never be able to go back to the life of a line officer. For all the threats and the challenges that faced the captains of the ships out there, a hundred more invisible dangers lurked in the clandestine realms where Miller and his kind worked. A handful of people knew, and that was how it was supposed to be. He would never be able to wear his medals or have a world named after him, but if SI did their job right, the galaxy would spin on in peaceful ignorance and never know they had been there.
Absently tapping his hand against his thigh, he turned away from the window as a spry Asian man sporting captain’s insignia on his tunic entered from the corridor. “Commander Miller, I presume?” His voice had a rich timbre.
“Aye, sir.” He blinked: it was the first time he’d ever met a man who had a street named after him in San Francisco.
The captain extended a hand. “Hikaru Sulu.”
Miller suppressed a smile. “It’s an honor, Captain. When the admiral informed me that the Excelsior was going to Da’Kel, it was a weight off my shoulders.”
Sulu smiled slightly. “Well, let’s just say as far as the Klingons are concerned, my reputation precedes me and leave it at that.”
“Some of them may consider your assignment to this mission to be . . . provocative.”
He shrugged. “I don’t doubt it. But as an associate of mine once said, ‘We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.’ “
“An associate?”
“Curzon Dax, an ambassador. Do you know him?” Miller shook his head and Sulu went on, almost to himself, “Pity he’s not here now. We could use him on this.”
“I’m sorry you had to have your current mission disrupted.”
The captain crossed to the airlock hatch near the observation window and typed in a summons code on the console there. His smile faded. “I won’t lie to you, Commander, my crew were not pleased to have a change in orders dropped on them at the eleventh hour. We were ready to ship out from Mars for a three-month mission mapping locations of Debrune archaeological sites . . . But the Fleet asks of us and we follow.”
“That we do, sir.”
Sulu gave Miller a measuring look. “Commander . . . ” he began, eyes narrowing, “let’s save ourselves a little time here. I’m not unfamiliar with covert operations and the needs for compartmentalization, information security, and the like. But I want to make it clear to you that I will in no way accept any Starfleet Intelligence operation that will place my ship or crew in harm’s way without my full knowledge and consent. Is that understood?”
“That would never be my intent, Captain,” Miller replied without hesitation. “You have been fully briefed?”
Sulu nodded. “Indeed, Command felt they needed me to speak face-to-face with them rather than transmit over a secure channel. I appreciate what the effects of the Da’Kel bombing will be if we don’t contain the problem immediately.”
Miller reflected the other man’s nod. “We’ve worked hard to make the Khitomer Accords happen. It can’t be derailed because of this.”
The captain’s face clouded for a moment. “I agree. I was there when that treaty was made, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let it collapse because some old soldiers want to reignite a pointless war.” He sighed. “I’ve been told you’re very good at what you do, Commander. I confess that I’ve never come across your name before, though.”
“That’s precisely because I am very good at what I do, sir.”
Sulu smiled again. “I think you and I will get along just fine.”
A motion at the corner of his eye drew Miller’s attention and he turned his head to see the egg-like shape of an automated travel pod rise into view. It settled into the airlock collar with a dull thud and the aft hatch opened.
Sulu beckoned him toward it. “I’ll pilot,” said the captain. “These days I don’t get the opportunity that much, so I like to take any I can get—”
Behind them, the door to the corridor hissed open and Miller turned to see a junior officer clutching a padd in his hand. The young man was flushed and out of breath, and the commander immediately noted dots of discoloration on his uniform tunic: raindrops. He had to have transported up from the surface, and clearly in a great hurry.
“Commander Miller?” he asked. He went to attention. “Captain Sulu, sir. Sirs.”
Sulu shot the new arrival a look. “Is there a problem, Lieutenant . . . ?”
“Vaughn, sir. Lieutenant J.G. Elias Vaughn. Starfleet Intelligence Command.”
“Oh?” Sulu glanced at Miller. “One of yours, Commander?”
Miller searched his memory for the name, and a vague scrap of recall snapped into place. “You’re part of Commander Egan’s jigsaw team, yes? Did he send you?”
Vaughn gathered himself. “Uh, not exactly, sir, no. I’m . . . I’m kind of operating
under my own initiative at the moment.” He held up the padd. “I have some data here I think you should see.”
Miller glanced at Sulu and saw what might have been a flicker of amusement in the other officer’s eyes, but the captain said nothing. Instead, he hesitated on the threshold of the travel pod.
“Does Commander Egan know you’re up here?” Miller asked.
Vaughn took a moment to frame his reply. “I don’t believe he’s aware at the moment, sir.” Before Miller could answer, he pressed on. “Sirs, if I may? I’ve found what I think may be a critical piece of intelligence connected to the Da’Kel bombing.”
“I’m sure if that’s so, your department head would pass it on,” offered Sulu.
“Yes sir,” said Vaughn. “I mean, no sir. I mean, Commander Egan considered the data to be noncritical. And I didn’t agree.”
“Is that so?” Miller’s voice grew cold and he took a step toward the lieutenant. He knew Per Egan by reputation, and he’d had his issues with the man in the past, but that had no bearing on the fact that this officer was apparently circumventing the chain of command. Miller told him so, fixing the young man with a hard glare.
To his credit, Vaughn didn’t buckle. “I understand that, sir. But I feel very strongly that you should be made aware of this information before you set off for Klingon space.”
“You can’t just ignore the orders of a commanding officer when it suits you,” Miller went on. “Isn’t that correct, Captain?”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Sulu said innocently.
In retrospect, perhaps the captain of the Excelsior wasn’t the best choice to bolster Miller’s argument, he reflected. Sulu had bucked command more than once in his career, and before that served under a captain who had made an art of it.
“I’m willing to accept any punishment I may incur,” Vaughn replied, still stiffly at attention, “after you look at this.” He held out the padd.
“You feel that strongly about the matter, Lieutenant?” Sulu asked.
“Yes sir, I do, sir.”
At length, Miller took the padd and glanced at it. “All right,” he said. The commander had to admit, his interest was piqued.
“I have a suggestion,” offered the captain, nodding toward the travel pod. “It’ll take us a couple of minutes to cross the spacedock to Excelsior. Why don’t we give Lieutenant Vaughn here that long to convince us both not to have him reprimanded?”
Miller gave a curt nod. “Two minutes, aye.” He looked back at the officer. “Clock’s running, Vaughn. Start talking.”
The pod left the docking collar so smoothly that Elias was only aware of it through the motion of lights outside the panoramic viewing canopy. Captain Sulu stood at the thruster controls, working them deftly and by touch alone.
Miller frowned at the padd containing the data from the comm traffic that Vaughn had hastily uploaded.
This wasn’t the smartest thing Elias Vaughn had ever done, and sure as hell wasn’t the safest play for a young Starfleet officer with hopes of promotion. But standing there in Egan’s office as the man tore him down, and dismissed his work out of what could only be petty departmental politics and personal dislike . . . He couldn’t let that stand. A lot of good people had died at Da’Kel, and he owed it to their memories to make sure the truth about what happened to them came out. If Vaughn relied on Egan to funnel the raw intel to the people who needed it, it would come too late. So when he heard that Miller was on Starbase One, he knew he had an opportunity to make things right.
But now, as he explained his discoveries about the tactics of the House of Q’unat, the rumors of their destruction, and the code word used by the fake Tellarite transport, he felt an icy wave of worry fill him, as if he were an empty vessel. What if Miller and Sulu didn’t see the connections that he had made? What if they took Egan’s side—or, worse, what if Egan had been correct all along?
Have I just blown my entire career on one impulsive act?
“Kallisti.” Miller rolled the word around, trying it on for size.
“The only reference to that term in the OIE database links directly to sealed files about the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon,” he said, speaking quickly as if he were afraid he would not have time to get it all out.
Sulu looked back at him, his expression deadly serious. “You’re certain?”
“Positive, Captain.”
Miller paged through the padd. “After Captain Sulu, Captain Kirk, and Captain Spock brought the plans of General Chang and his coconspirators to light, SI moved in to annex and seal all the data we could find. But unfortunately, those involved on our side had prepared for that eventuality.”
“Cartwright . . . ” Sulu said the man’s name, grim-faced. The captain had been the one who caught the renegade admiral as he attempted to flee the scene of his crime.
Miller nodded. “And his supporters. Drake and the others. We caught them all eventually, but after the revelations at Khitomer, they purged the databanks of almost everything. We managed to rescue some scraps, but little else. The Kallisti reference was part of that.”
“The Da’Kel attack,” insisted Vaughn. “It has to be the first strike in a campaign engineered to break the Accords! And this proves that someone involved with it was part of the plot to murder Gorkon seven years ago!”
“No, Lieutenant,” said Miller. “It doesn’t prove anything. Egan was right when he told you this was thin.”
Vaughn’s gut tightened. “Sir . . . ” Here it comes. Miller’s going to kick me straight into the brig. He had rolled the dice and now they were about to come up snake-eyes.
“But it’s also something.” The commander weighed the padd in his hand. “I’m just not sure what yet.”
Vaughn swallowed, his throat suddenly arid. He wasn’t certain, but it sounded like Miller was agreeing with him.
“May I?” Sulu took the padd and scrutinized it, effortlessly steering the travel pod at the same time. After a moment he spoke again. “The code word is associated here with another of the conspirators. Valeris.”
“After Cartwright died in prison in ‘98, she’s the only surviving member of the plot,” said Vaughn. “She’s serving a life term at the Jaros II stockade.”
“Jaros II . . . ” repeated the captain. “It’s on our way.”
“It is?”
“It can be. I’ll arrange for the Excelsior to take a short detour en route to Da’Kel. I can send a message to an old crewmate of mine who may be able to get us access to Valeris.”
A grin threatened to break out on Vaughn’s face, but he kept it back. He almost sagged against the wall of the pod in relief. He’d done the right thing; Miller’s trust in his discovery invalidated all the doubts Elias had felt, and proved to him that his instincts were valuable after all.
He looked up, out of the forward canopy, and before them lay a curved steel-white expanse of tritanium, lined in cobalt and dotted with running lights. Dark letters picked out the name and registration across the starship’s primary hull: U.S.S. Excelsior NCC-2000.
Beyond the center of the disc, where the platform of the command deck and the impulse manifolds rose high, Vaughn caught sight of a pair of long, sleek warp nacelles. They glowed an electric blue, the chained power of the interstellar engines dormant but ready to be released at a single word of command. The cruiser seemed as if it were already racing, even though it lay at rest.
“She’s something else, isn’t she?” said Sulu quietly, noticing Vaughn’s attention.
“Aye, Captain,” he replied—then the lieutenant shook off the moment and looked away. “I want to thank you both for hearing me out, sirs. I’m sorry I was so, uh, unconventional in my approach. But I felt it was warranted.”
The travel pod dropped toward a docking ring at the rear of the starship’s command deck, turning as it fell to orient for capture. Vaughn felt Miller’s steady gaze on him.
“That’s it?” said the commander. “You’re done?”
Vaughn blink
ed. This wasn’t the response he had expected. “Uh. Yes?”
“Wrong answer,” Miller replied. He held up the padd. “You think you can just drop this in my lap and then go back to OIE without another word?”
“I don’t follow you, sir,” Vaughn replied. But he had an idea.
“I think you will,” said the other man. “If you were so all-fired certain of your interpretation of this data that you would risk censure and reprimand from not one but three senior officers . . . then I would expect you to have the conviction to follow your instincts wherever they take you.”
“I don’t think . . . ” Vaughn ran out of words, unsure of how to proceed.
“I could use an extra set of eyes, Lieutenant. Someone with good analytical skills; someone who can see the unseen, which you clearly have done.” He glanced at Sulu. “With your permission, Captain?”
“I think Lieutenant Vaughn might wish to be off-planet when Commander Egan learns what took place here,” he agreed. The travel pod settled into the airlock slot and the doors gently eased open.
Those hard eyes bored into Vaughn’s, the challenge open and ready. “Are you up for it, Mister Vaughn? Or would you like to take the pod back to dock control for us instead?”
The question hung in the air, and he hesitated. Part of him wanted to accept the offer immediately, while another shied away. Was he really ready for something like this? He thought about Egan’s comments; was he just entertaining the fantasy of being a field agent?
There was only one way to be sure.
Vaughn went to attention once more and looked toward Captain Sulu. “Permission to come aboard, sir?” he asked.
Sulu gave a half smile. “Granted.”
Xand Depot
Deep Space
Klingon Border Zone
Once, when ships had to struggle to make it past warp factor two, when the space lanes were longer and journeys extended into months instead of days, commercial way stations like Xand Depot were a fact of life. It was little more than a generator spindle surrounded by a cluster of fusion-welded cargo modules refitted for purpose, and bits of decommissioned warp one transports that were not worth the cost of scrapping. Even at the height of its popularity, it had been a raggedy place, a patchwork port adrift along the contested outer edges of Klingon territory. But then there had been accidents and losses of life, piracy and a dozen other smaller problems. In the end, Xand Depot was abandoned and left to decay.
Star Trek® Cast no Shadow Page 5
