Gattin stood up. “You have a lot of things that demand your attention.”
He snorted. “Don’t pretend you were trying to spare me some worry, Gattin. I can read you like a picture-fold, and you made precious little attempt to hide your distrust of Valeris and the others. How many times did you suggest murdering them?”
“Not enough, it would seem.”
Rein sighed. “Please don’t try to think for me. And don’t ever allow yourself to think that my focus is not on the mission at hand. Of course I love my brother, and of course I want to try to heal him, and the others. But that isn’t going to blind me to what we’re doing here. The war with the tyrants is always at the forefront of my every action. Second-guessing me undermines that.”
She folded her arms. Gattin had expected him to unleash a tirade of criticism on her, but he was reasoned and measured. “I did what I thought was best,” she said.
He nodded. “You did what I was going to do myself, you just got here faster. But I want you to know why I allowed the Vulcan in. It’s not just because of the medicines. If it were only that, I would have let you shoot her the moment she gave them to us.”
“Then why?” Gattin demanded. “Kallisti . . . the assassination was seven years ago! They burned us . . . We have no reason to trust her now!”
“Valeris was right when she said we need their help. We do.” He gestured to the comm gear once again. “They won’t send us more men, or accept any responsibility for the ones we’ve lost. But Valeris and Vaughn were Starfleet, so they have skills we can use . . . And that bird-of-prey? You saw how it could hide in plain sight. Think of what we could do with a vessel like that.”
“Kaj doesn’t seem like the kind to give up her ship willingly.”
He shrugged. “Kaj is a mercenary, isn’t she? If I put things in terms of profit and loss, she’ll see it our way.” Rein shook his head. “No, our patrons, as much as they have done for us, for all the aid they have given the fight for Krios’s independence . . . It is important we don’t rely on them alone. Dealing with that motherless cur Chang taught us that. Valeris represents an alternative. She says that there are other remnants from Cartwright’s organization still extant in the Federation. She’ll be of use to us, I know it.”
Gattin scowled, her expression saying more than words.
Rein gave a grunt of amusement. “You don’t agree.”
“What was the first indication?” she retorted. “If the Vulcan wants to be trusted, then she’ll need to do something to earn it—something more than just handing out a few containers of medical supplies.” Gattin jabbed her finger in the air. “I want proof of her new loyalties.”
“Of course you do,” said Rein. “So we’ll make our new friends give it to us.”
Rein’s subordinate Tulo came with a pair of armed men and demanded that Valeris and Vaughn accompany them into the lower levels of the asteroid complex. Kaj made a good show of appearing unconcerned about their fates, making no attempt to intervene.
“Unless, of course, the Vulcan wants to negotiate a bonus fee,” she said, once more playing the soldier of fortune to the hilt. “Then I’ll happily kill every one of these pattern-faced fools.”
“That won’t be required,” said Valeris, but the unspoken part of the sentence was: For now, do nothing.
Vaughn wondered if Kaj would follow the inference: the major was the proverbial loose cannon, and her quick temper could be concealed for only so long. As they left Kaj and the Orion behind, he hoped that the Klingon operative would be able to hold fire until they had a better grasp on the situation they were in.
For all his doubts about her, Valeris had finally made good on the promise that had been forged in the prison on Jaros II. She had brought them into the lair of the Thorn, face-to-face with the architects of the attack on Da’Kel. Now all they needed was to find a way to neutralize the Kriosian terrorists without getting themselves killed into the bargain.
This would have been so much easier if General Igdar wasn’t a colossal pain in the ass, he thought. Ever since they arrived in the Ikalian Belt, Vaughn had been wondering how to get a message out to the Klingon forces. But would they even believe me? He recalled Igdar’s reaction to the suggestion that a world as insignificant as Krios Prime could possibly be a threat to the Empire. The general had considered it a joke; he was unable to concede that anything less than another Klingon could be a match for his fleet.
Igdar’s recalcitrant, lumbering manner had forced them to make choices that pushed this mission far into the realms of illegality. Vaughn, Valeris, and all of the Chon’m’s crew were now as much fugitives as the members of the Thorn, and their only hope of clearing their names was to take down the Kriosians before the terrorists could strike again.
But it was hard to tell how big a force they faced. Rein was no fool: he’d made sure that all corridors were cleared wherever the new arrivals went, that all hatches remained shut. For all Vaughn knew, the dozen or so faces he’d seen might represent the full manpower of the Thorn; but the asteroid base was built big enough to house hundreds of miners, and any one of the branching corridors could lead to barracks and training areas. He turned his analyst’s skills to observation and silently took note of everything he was seeing around him. When the time came to move against Rein’s people, they would likely have little opportunity to debate it. He had to be ready.
It grew warmer the deeper they went into the asteroid, until finally the curving corridors deposited them in a chamber filled with workstations and assembly gear. The similarity between it and the radiation-soaked compartment on Xand Depot immediately struck the lieutenant. Rein and Gattin were waiting for them.
“You wished to see us?” said Valeris, showing no signs that she had made the same connection as Vaughn.
“I want to believe you are sincere,” Rein began, without preamble. “I really do. But my second lacks my willingness to accept new faces.”
“And yet, she seemed so warm and welcoming on the ship,” Vaughn said under his breath.
Rein smiled. “I don’t want you to think I am ungrateful for your gifts of the medical supplies, but I’m going to need something more.”
“We have no more medicines to give,” Valeris told him.
“Not that,” Gattin said irritably.
Beyond the barriers of force walls, Vaughn could clearly see manipulators and assembly platforms. “You’re constructing another isolytic weapon, like the ones you used at Da’Kel.” As he said the words, from nowhere a spark of cold fury kindled in Elias’s chest. He thought of the crew of the Bode, dying in a blaze of radiation, never knowing who had attacked them or the reason why. He shuttered it away, burying the emotion deep.
“Not like them,” Rein said with a swagger. “Something greater. Da’Kel was just the opening shot, the echo of the shout. What comes next will be heard around the galaxy.”
“I see,” said Valeris, moving to one of the humming force fields. “And you want us to help you finish assembling the device.”
“You were both serving officers in the Federation Starfleet. You have skills that will speed the process along, yes?”
“Yes,” agreed the Vulcan. She turned to look at Vaughn, and he fought to control his expression, to hide his shock.
Gattin went to a locker and drew out two exposure suits from within. She threw them at Vaughn and he caught the heavy garments with a grunt. “Put those on, unless you want to boil in your own skin.”
“We’ll consider this your . . . initiation,” said Rein. “After all, it’s much easier to find trust for someone willing to share in your labors. Don’t you agree?”
Once they had both donned the thick, terra-cotta-colored suits, Vaughn and Valeris passed through a one-way field membrane that allowed the passage of slow-moving objects of large density, but deflected the majority of energetic particles. They moved clumsily through a sterilizing bay and into the assembly room proper.
Vaughn saw the framework of a mechanis
m that resembled the warhead of a photon torpedo but stripped of targeting systems and support gear. In the middle of the cluster were two halves of an orb of silvery metal, festooned with glowing cables and circuits. He recognized what had to be energy-exchange vanes and knots of spatial antennae, components more commonly suited to warp engines than weaponry.
The exposure gear they wore was Klingon surplus, like a lot of the hardware the Thorn utilized, likely captured during raids on their oppressors. It lacked the form and function of the Starfleet environment suits Vaughn was used to, but he gradually found his pace with it. The radiation exposure meter in the corner of his suit’s dirty visor peaked alarmingly the moment they entered the chamber. He wondered how a scale calibrated for a more hardy Klingon user would fit to a frailer human being like him. Valeris, hailing from a desert world like Vulcan, would also have a greater tolerance than a man born under the skies of Berengaria VII.
Vaughn made a few experimental moves, flexing his hands and fingers as he got used to the coverall. Inside, the suit smelled stale—rancid, even—and he decided to breathe through his mouth. From a place near his right ear, a steady muttering crackle smothered any attempt to use the suit’s internal communicator. The radiation in the workspace was enough to garble any transmission.
Instead, Valeris came to him and offered Vaughn a cable. He found a connector on the exposure suit’s belt and snapped them together.
“Can you hear me?” said the Vulcan. He saw her mouth moving behind her visor, and he nodded. “We can speak freely via the hard-line,” she went on. “The particle levels in this room are enough to disrupt any attempts to monitor us.”
“Great,” he replied. “We may get radiation poisoning, but at least we can have a private conversation.”
She indicated the core of the isolytic device. “I assume you are somewhat familiar with this style of zero-point fusion initiator?”
“I took engineering courses at the Academy, so yes, somewhat . . .”
Valeris looked away, reaching for a tool. “You can assist me.”
Vaughn grabbed her arm. “Assist you with what, exactly? Assembling a weapon of mass destruction for use by a terrorist organization? I never signed up for that!” He nodded at the incomplete weapon. “Look at this thing. Even I can tell that this device is a lot more powerful than the ones used at Da’Kel. The yield from a clean detonation . . . ” He paused. “We’re talking about a subspace fracture of catastrophic proportions.”
She shook him off and set to work. “The longer you stand there watching me, the more Rein and his people will become suspicious. Please bring me a laser probe.”
He frowned and glanced to the side. From the corner of the visor he could see the Kriosians observing them both from the far side of the field barriers. Reluctantly, Vaughn fetched the tool Valeris asked for, and under her direction, held it in place. “All right,” he said. “So, how do we sabotage this thing?”
“I have no intention of rendering this device useless, Lieutenant,” she told him. “They will know if we make any attempt to do so. This is a test we need to pass.”
“We do that and we’re committing a crime that carries a death sentence in Klingon space, and life without parole pretty much everywhere else!”
“Did you forget you recruited me from a prison?”
“There’s a reason isolytic subspace weapons are banned by every sane species in the galaxy! You’ll be handing Rein a loaded gun!”
“I am aware of that. Illuminate the tertiary manifold, please. Set at twenty nanometers.”
Vaughn complied, still scowling. “We can’t do this . . .”
“We must,” Valeris insisted. “At this point, we do not know how many devices the Thorn have built, or where they have been deployed. We must stall for time.”
“There’s another option,” he said. “We let Kaj off the chain. Her crew are all special forces. They may be able to take the base.”
“The risk factor is too great. The actinides in the walls of this asteroid prevent beaming, so any attack would have to move directly from the landing bay. One word from Rein, and the bay could be isolated and opened to vacuum.”
He shook his head. “Okay, another way, then. I’m sure Kaj has an idea.”
Valeris’s head bobbed behind her visor. “As am I, but I doubt it will resolve itself as anything else but brute force. The logical approach is to continue to . . . play along.”
“For how long?” he demanded. “Until Rein has his finger on the button? Until the Thorn blow up something else?”
She met his gaze. “You do not trust me. Despite my actions since leaving Jaros II . . . taking the helm of the Excelsior, leading you to the Kriosians . . . You still do not have any conviction in me. You lied to Major Kaj at the Depot. I believe you hold me in as little regard as she does.”
Vaughn was silent for a moment. “Miller was right. Nothing about this mission . . . this job . . . follows the book.” He sighed. “Let me tell you why I’m here, Valeris. I owe it to Darius Miller to bring this to a close. To him and every single man and woman who died on board the Bode. I wonder if someone like you can appreciate that. Do you understand the meaning of the honor of the service?”
There was a brief flicker of something he couldn’t read in Valeris’s eyes, and then she looked away, returning to the delicate work. “You think I am a traitor. But you should know, Lieutenant Vaughn, that everything I did to earn my imprisonment, I did because I, too, believed in the honor of the service. I did what I thought was right for my world and the Federation.”
He snorted. “You thought it was right to provoke a war?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What war? If the Khitomer Accords had never been signed, I estimate the Klingon Empire would have collapsed within five-point-six-eight years. The so-called noble houses, turning on each other, self-destructing. They would burn themselves out. Starfleet’s most lethal adversary would have fallen to ruin.”
“Sounds like you’ve given it a lot of thought.”
Valeris didn’t look up. “There was little else to do on Jaros II.”
“But what if it went another way?” Vaughn insisted. “The Klingons aren’t known for their restraint. They would have become more aggressive, lashing out like a wounded animal . . .”
“Retract to eight nanometers,” she ordered, working a set of micro-calipers. “The point is moot,” Valeris went on. “Continued speculation has no value. But my statement remains: I am not a traitor. I consider myself a patriot.”
“All too often that word is used to cover a multitude of sins.”
The Vulcan stopped and spared him a glance. “I did what was logical.” Her voice had an edge to it now, something Vaughn hadn’t heard before.
The lieutenant shook his head. “You talk about what you did and you say the word ‘logic,’ like that’ll explain it away. But I don’t buy that, not for one damn second. You tell yourself your choices are about reason, but they’re not. They’re about you, Valeris. But you’ll never allow yourself to admit that, because that would mean admitting you’re like me . . . like the Klingons. Someone experiencing an emotional reaction.”
Valeris’s gaze went icy, and then Vaughn heard a dull buzz sound in his ear. On the environment suit’s visor, the radiation meter was blinking red and green.
“Your exposure level is about to exceed the safe margin,” she said flatly, dismissing him. “You need to leave the chamber and decontaminate.” Valeris reached out and tugged the communications cable from the socket on Vaughn’s suit, ending any further conversation.
Marina Green Park
San Francisco, Earth
United Federation of Planets
Malla Tancreda walked quickly across the path running parallel with Marina Boulevard and threw a look over her shoulder in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Gray clouds, heavy with unspent rain, had been gathering over Richardson Bay all afternoon and now they were rolling slowly southward, inching closer to the city. The
doctor had left her umbrella behind at Starfleet Medical, fooled by the morning sunshine into thinking that the whole day would be warm and temperate. She had yet to get used to San Francisco’s changeable weather patterns; the city was much different from the familiar subtropical coasts of her home on Betazed. The wind off the bay pulled at her skirt, and Malla picked up the pace, deciding that she would summon a drone-cab at the Fillmore Street intersection.
She saw the Vulcan coming toward her from the opposite direction. He was narrow and gaunt, wearing a tunic and trousers that seemed deliberately designed to be nondescript. He made eye contact with her and gave a solemn nod. “Doctor Tancreda.” It wasn’t a greeting or a question, just a statement.
“Hello?” She slowed to a halt and he did the same, inclining his head. “I’m so sorry,” she went on, “have we met? I’m terrible with names . . .” As the doctor spoke, she pushed out a little with her more ephemeral senses and took the measure of the man. He was guarded and finely controlled, his thought process all hard edges and opaque, seamless surfaces.
“We have not met before,” he replied. “I would like to trouble you for a few moments of your time.”
Tancreda felt the first small stirrings of alarm. “Well, perhaps if you’d like to make an appointment with my office—”
“What I have to discuss would be better addressed in a setting like this one,” said the Vulcan. “It is about a delicate matter.”
She allowed herself to settle into a neutral, ready aspect. “Oh?”
He nodded once. “Specifically, the repayment of a debt owed. By your employer.”
“I work for Starfleet Command, Mister, uh . . .”
He made no attempt to provide his name. “Your other employer, Doctor Tancreda.”
The alarm in her thoughts became a clarion. “I think you have made some sort of mistake,” she said, her tone cooling. “Please excuse me.”
Star Trek: TOS: Cast no Shadow Page 22
