“An installation of some sort?” Picard asked.
“I … I don’t think so, Captain,” Choudhury said. As she tapped commands into her panel, she added, “I should be able to get a visual.”
Picard watched as the main viewer blinked, the image of the moon increasing considerably, with just a fraction of its surface filling the screen. A dark smudge showed in the center of the picture. “Magnify,” Picard said, but his people knew their jobs, and already a small, red rectangle flashed around the area of interest. A moment later, the dark area expanded, revealing its identity.
Somebody—Elfiki, Picard thought—gasped, which effectively captured how Picard felt. He stood up and stepped forward, as though a closer look might change the reality of what he saw. On the ashen surface of the moon, the basic outline of a Romulan Valdore-class warbird stood out like a sinister scar. Its hull had been obliterated, as though the vessel had plunged keel-first onto the moon, disintegrating on impact.
“Life signs?” Picard said, almost whispering on the quiet bridge. The answer to his query seemed painfully clear.
Controls cheeped beneath Choudhury’s touch. “None, sir,” she said. “I am reading biological matter, nothing immediately identifiable, but consistent with the remains of a crew after a high-velocity crash.”
“Are there any signs of escape pods in the area?” Worf asked.
“No, sir,” Choudhury said, “but I’ll keep scanning.”
Sorrow filled Picard at the loss of a starship with all hands. But he also understood in that moment that the wider repercussions of that loss had yet to be felt. What will happen when the Enterprise returns to Federation space and reports the unexplained loss of the Eletrix, and the deaths of the thousand Romulans who served on board?
Picard knew what he needed to do next, and that he should do it in the privacy of his ready room. At such an emotional time, though, he would not leave his crew. Instead, with Choudhury occupied searching for possible survivors, Picard called on the operations officer.
“Glinn Dygan,” he said. “Record a message to Starfleet Command, highest priority and highest level of encryption.” As he stood in the center of the bridge and searched for the words to say, he wondered not only what actions Starfleet, the Federation Council, and President Bacco would take, but what the Enterprise crew would find when it returned home.
29
Sisko arrived for his shift on the bridge with a spring in his step. Though it would take longer to reach the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the wormhole because of the detailed scans of the region that Starfleet had ordered, Robinson flew just days away from the Idran system. Before long, his crew’s six-month mission would end, and he would finally get to spend time with his daughter, rather than just seeing her in subspace messages.
Not that I don’t love those messages, Sisko thought as he padded down the portside ramp to the main level of the bridge. He looked forward with great anticipation to every transmission he received from Rebecca, who had not missed sending one every third day. A couple of them had been shorter than he would have preferred, such as when Rebecca had been sick or when she’d been preoccupied with the new snowfall or her possible upcoming trip with her mother aboard Xhosa, but he gave Kasidy a great deal of credit for helping to keep father and daughter connected.
Commander Rogeiro already sat in the first officer’s chair as Sisko took the center seat. “Good morning, Anxo,” Sisko said.
“Good morning, Captain,” said the exec. “I hope you slept well.”
Sisko smiled. “Like a baby,” he said. “Must be the smell of nerak blossoms in the air.” The fragrant, pink flowers bloomed all over the surface of Bajor.
“Isn’t it winter in Kendra Province?” Rogeiro said teasingly.
“Ah, but it’s summertime in Tozhat and Hedrikspool and Releketh,” Sisko said.
“But won’t you be visiting your daughter in Kendra when we get back?”
“That’s why they invented transporters,” Sisko said. “Although Rebecca loves the winter, so we may just wind up playing in the snow for my leave.”
“Making snow-captains?” Rogeiro said. Sisko had told him about his daughter’s youthful ambitions.
“Exactly,” Sisko said. “And speaking of that, did I get a message overnight?” Part of his good mood stemmed from knowing that another transmission would await him when he arrived on the bridge that morning. He had expected it to arrive the day before, but the regularly scheduled communications packet from Deep Space 9 hadn’t arrived.
“Actually, sir, we may have a problem,” Rogeiro said, adopting a more serious manner. “We didn’t receive the regular comm packet again last night.”
“Two nights in a row?” Sisko said. “Problems with the Gamma Quadrant communications relay?”
“It’s probably just that,” Rogeiro said. “We just sent a test message. We’re close enough that if the station receives it, we should get a reply in just a few hours.”
Sisko nodded. “With a ship on a mission in the Gamma Quadrant, standard procedure if the communications relay goes down is to send the Defiant through the wormhole so that it can transmit a status to that ship.”
“I know,” said Rogeiro. “So we should have received something. But maybe the Defiant is tied up somewhere.”
“In which case they would send a runabout into the Gamma Quadrant,” Sisko said.
“Maybe the Deep Space Nine crew are working on the comm relay, or maybe they don’t even know it’s down yet,” Rogeiro suggested. “Just because we’re not receiving messages from the station doesn’t mean that they’re not receiving ours.”
“True,” Sisko said. “You’re probably right. It’s probably nothing.”
But a knot of concern started to form in Sisko’s gut.
30
Denison Morad hastened along the alley, trying to hurry to his destination without appearing either frightened or vulnerable. As he passed through the shadows between the old brick buildings, he pulled his coat tightly closed about him, an action he intended to signal to anyone who saw him that his alacrity stemmed from a desire to escape the elements—a ploy that benefited from its accuracy. A cold rain fell on Relvanek, the wind off the Loren Sea picking up as night descended on the coastal town.
Up ahead, the wet cobblestones led to an intersection. Morad emerged from the alley onto a wider avenue, the dark, recessed waters of one of the town’s many canals dividing the road in two from right to left. He peered around, searching for anything that would positively identify the thoroughfare for him. He saw no signs, no characters, no symbols of any kind. Even the clapboard façades of the buildings that fronted on the avenue went unmarked. In Relvanek, he knew—and really anywhere on Dessica II—if you didn’t know the place to which you headed, you shouldn’t even be on the planet.
Morad leaned into the rain and tramped to the edge of the canal, to where a short, wooden bridge arched over it. He squinted and put a hand above his eyes, shielding them from the rain. He saw several boats tied up in the narrow waterway, their shells clattering against the stone sides of the canal walls. Seeing the swift current and smelling a damp, fetid stench, he wondered just how many dead or dying bodies had been dumped there through the centuries and had drifted out to sea.
Judging his location by the width of the canal, Morad realized that his destination stood on the near side of the waterway. He started away from the bridge and to his left down the avenue. It displeased him to see at least half a dozen other figures moving among the pools of light thrown by a run of unevenly spaced and inconsistently functioning lampposts.
Morad wanted to get out of the miserable weather, but more than that, he wished to flee the notoriously dangerous, crime-ridden settlements that spread across the surface of Dessica II. He expected everybody he passed to lunge at him, to attempt to rob him. He carried only a small amount of the locally accepted currency with him, but nothing else beyond the shabby, secondhand clothes he wore. He most assuredly did not bear a
ny identification on his person. What Morad had brought with him of value from the Cardassian Union, he kept in his head. But he harbored no fantasies that possessing no appreciably valuable material objects would keep him safe.
Morad continued to clutch his coat closed as he made his way down the avenue. Rainwater poured down his face. He counted the doorways he passed even as he kept as far as possible from the others desperate enough to be out in the rain, at night, in Relvanek. When he reached the ninth door, he continued on, allowing a Vulcan—More likely a Romulan than a Vulcan, Morad thought—to stagger off past him and into the darkness, bellowing drunkenly. Then Morad circled back around, pushed open the door, and dashed through it.
Inside, a haze of blue-hued smoke struck him immediately, its burnt scent assaulting his nose and lungs. A crowd of people thronged the medium-sized room, the heat of their bodies and the discordant lash of their many conversations cramming the space full. Almost as dark within the saloon as it had been outside, the atmosphere did nothing to alleviate the sense of danger that Morad had felt on the streets. Booths constructed of bare wood lined two walls, while a rudimentary, half-stocked bar filled a third. Only two of the lighting panels in the ceiling, both above the bar, provided more than the dimmest illumination; most of the panels over the booths remained completely unpowered, while a few others could do little more than turn the room’s milling occupants into silhouettes.
Fighting the urge to turn and rush back outside, Morad instead pulled his coat open in the heat, slicked his hair back with one hand, and wiped his face as dry as he could with the other. Then he flung himself forward, into the mass of people. The place reeked not just of smoke, but of odors he did not recognize, which nevertheless possessed the sickly tang of bodily secretions. He choked back the urge to gag. Struggling forward, he pushed past members of one species after another. He saw the rugged green flesh of a Gorn, the deeply lined face of an Yridian, the pointed ears of one or another of the Vulcanoid races. He spotted a Bolian, a Tzenkethi, a Nausicaan. He worked hard to avoid making eye contact with anybody.
Finally finding an empty spot at the bar, Morad reached into an outer pocket of his coat. Pulling out five of the small objects there, he slapped them down onto the surface in front of him, his hand covering them. He waited until the bartender walked over and stood before him.
“Yeah?” the Corvallen said. His face looked like a piece of pottery that had fractured and then been glued back together.
“Kali-fal,” ordered Morad, speaking loudly in order to be heard above the many voices around him.
The Corvallen angled his head to one side and regarded him with unconcealed suspicion. “Kali-fal?” he said. “That’s not a usual drink for a Cardassian.”
“I’m not a usual Cardassian,” Morad said. He delivered the words as a reflex, simply wanting to meet the bartender’s distrust with a show of strength and confidence, but in the next instant, Morad realized the veracity of what he’d said. Indeed, if more Cardassians believed as he did, if they supported the true order of things, he wouldn’t have needed to travel to Dessica II. He had gone there specifically because most of his people had lost their way, while he had not. “I am not a usual Cardassian,” he said again, emphasizing the point to himself.
“I guess not,” the Corvallen said. “And here I didn’t think any of you spoon heads could appreciate Romulan spirits.”
Morad leaned into the bar as though rising to the taunt, fully aware that some weapon somewhere in the building must be trained on him at that moment. “Are you a food critic?” he said, lifting his hand from the objects he had pulled out of his pocket. “Or are you a bartender?”
The Corvallen held Morad’s gaze for what seemed too long a time, but then he glanced down. When he looked back up, his hand moved forward, snatching away the slips of gold-pressed latinum. “Right now,” he said, “I’ll be a bartender.” He stepped back from the bar and turned toward the rows of bottles that only partially filled the shelves there. As he reached to pull down an almost empty, transparent container of pale-blue liquid, the bartender also deposited the slips of latinum into a slot in the wall.
After upending the bottle into a low glass, the Corvallen returned to plunk the few sips of kali-fal down in front of Morad. In other establishments, in other places, Morad would have complained that he hadn’t received equitable value for his currency. In Relvanek, though, he understood that he hadn’t just purchased a drink; he had procured time in the saloon, as well as a measure of anonymity.
As the Corvallen moved back down to the other end of the bar, Morad picked up his drink, leaned on one elbow, and turned to face the rest of the room. He did not know the identity of the individual he would meet that night, but the person would know him. Morad appeared to be the only Cardassian in the saloon, and the clothes he wore and the drink he had ordered would further identify him. He also assumed that the operative would have memorized his face.
Morad raised the glass of kali-fal to his mouth, but even with only a small amount of the drink, its piquant aroma penetrated deep into his sinuses. He snapped his head around involuntarily, then turned to the bar and set the glass back down. When he looked around again at the room, an Andorian had appeared directly behind him.
“You’re a long way from home,” the blue-skinned alien said. He had a thick, barrel chest and well-muscled arms. He wore a tan vest over a bright red shirt, and he spoke in thickly accented but understandable Cardassian. The pair of antennae that emerged from his coiffure of white hair moved about noticeably, but seemed focused more on the rest of the room than on Morad.
“I like to travel,” Morad replied, a planned response to the words that had been spoken to him.
The Andorian immediately turned and started away. Morad grabbed his drink, then pushed off from the bar and followed after him. He struggled to keep up with the Andorian, whose muscular physique cut through the crowd like a disruptor blast through ice. People closed ranks behind him, though, and Morad bounced past one after another, feeling like a spaceship traversing a dense asteroid field.
At last, the Andorian reached the far corner of the room, where a pair of Kressari sat across from each other in one of the ramshackle booths. Morad arrived in time to see the two men quickly extracting themselves from their benches and beating a hasty retreat across the saloon, obviously persuaded that their best interests lay in surrendering their seats to the Andorian. Morad’s contact swung himself into the booth, and Morad sat down opposite him, placing his drink on the table.
The Andorian wasted no time. From a vest pocket, he removed a small, cylindrical object, which Morad recognized as an audio-dampening field generator. The Andorian set the silver device down on the table and triggered it with a touch, a gold ring about its center indicating its activation. Then he removed an isolinear optical rod from another pocket and pushed it across the rough surface of the tabletop.
“The rod is encrypted utilizing our third protocol,” the Andorian said. “On it, you’ll find an account number from the Bank of Luria. The account contains the funds you requested, as well as access to a storage compartment stocked with the equipment you need.”
Morad reached down to the table and scooped up the rod, which he then tucked into an inner pocket in his coat. “This will be of tremendous help,” he told the Andorian. “It will facilitate all of our operations.”
“See that it does,” the Andorian said. “And what do you have to report on our current undertaking?”
Despite the presence on the table of the anti-eavesdropping device, Morad glanced around the saloon to ensure that nobody present paid him and the Andorian any undue attention. “We don’t anticipate having to use them in the near term,” Morad said, “but the explosives are in place.”
“It doesn’t matter when or even if we use them,” the Andorian said. “As long as the bombs are there, they give us an advantage over the Federation.”
Morad nodded his agreement. It had taken a long time for his facti
on to graduate to the bold actions necessary for success, and it had been a struggle to re-form after the war, especially given the direction that the civilian Cardassian government had taken. With their newfound allies, though, and a continued resolve to do what they had to do, the group had begun to make considerable advances for their cause.
“Is there anything else?” the Andorian wanted to know.
“No,” Morad said.
The beefy Andorian immediately grabbed up his device from the table, thumbed it off, and replaced it in his vest pocket. He hauled himself up and out of the booth, but as he started away, Morad reached out and took hold of his forearm. The Andorian looked down at him, then leaned in closer as Morad opened his mouth to say something.
“Please pass along the thanks of the movement, as well as my personal gratitude,” Morad said, whispering in the Andorian’s ear. “We’re very appreciative to Chairwoman Sela.”
31
From his command chair, Captain Picard looked at the image on the main viewscreen. Although he had seen it many times by that point, a sense of horror and great sadness filled him. He knew that it had an impact on his crew as well. Silence, interrupted only by the sounds of controls being operated, had come to fill the bridge like a rising tide. Counselor Hegol also reported a significant increase in the call for sessions with his staff since the discovery of the tragedy.
It had been a dozen years since Picard’s own starship—the predecessor to the one he presently commanded—had crashed on the surface of Veridian III. He hadn’t been aboard the ship at the time of the accident, but he’d witnessed its aftermath. The engineering hull had been destroyed by a breach of the warp core, sending the detached saucer section hurtling into the atmosphere of the planet it orbited. Because there had been some small amount of time to react to the disaster as it had unfolded, Enterprise’s casualties had been remarkably light, but Picard recalled well seeing such a large portion of his starship downed. Without the drive and secondary hull, the rest of the ship looked alarmingly incomplete, but sitting on the surface of a planet, it also looked wrong.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night Page 36
