by David Mack
“Very well.” Togor rose from his glenget, a Chelon-made piece of furniture designed to suit species that were more comfortable kneeling than sitting. “Let us reconvene in two hours.”
“Agreed,” Bacco said. She and Sozzerozs stood, and their delegations did the same. Wary but polite nods were exchanged as the two groups filed out of the room by separate entrances. Once they were out of the room and moving down the corridor to their suites, Bacco fell into step beside Piñiero and asked softly, “What was that about?”
“We have a situation brewing in orbit. The Atlas is in a standoff with the Enterprise.”
That was not the bad news Bacco had expected. “What’s the Enterprise doing here?”
“I was saving this for later,” Piñiero said with a frown. “Last night’s attempted break-in? Bateson’s crew says the sensor readings show a Soong-type android was involved, and they arrested Lieutenant Commander Data this morning at the starport, less than ten kilometers from here. He’s being held at the embassy in connection with the breach, as well as last night’s murder of the Starfleet Intelligence section chief for Orion.”
The president shook her head. “And somehow Picard found out about it and brought one of the most closely watched ships in the fleet right to our summit.”
“That’s not all. He’s on his way down. He wants to talk with you, in person.”
A disgruntled sigh barely scratched the surface of Bacco’s irritation.
“So much for keeping a low profile.”
• • •
Lean, silent, and serious, the pair of Protection Detail agents met Picard outside the main gate of the Bank of Orion. One was a human man in his thirties, with dark blond hair, prominent ears, and a strong jawline. The other was an Andorian thaan whose chiseled, glacier-blue cheekbones were framed by shock-cut white hair. They wore identical dark suits, slate-gray shirts, and black ties, and their eyes were concealed by matching black wraparound glasses that Picard suspected were equipped with full-spectrum light-enhancing technology. He didn’t see any weapons on them, but he couldn’t say if that was because their sidearms were so well concealed, or because they had been required to forgo them while on Orion soil.
The Andorian moved forward as Picard stepped free of the transporter beam. “Captain. I’m Agent th’Neyloh. This is Agent Sinkonnen. Please raise your arms.”
Picard let th’Neyloh frisk him as Sinkonnen took a slender, compact scanner from an inside pocket of his suit coat. The rectangular device was barely large enough to fill his palm. As the Andorian backed away from Picard, Sinkonnen put away the scanner. “He’s clean.”
“Follow us, Captain,” th’Neyloh said. The gates behind him opened inward, toward the bank, and the protection agents led Picard past armed Orion soldiers and across the low-walled bridge. Picard stole glances to either side, but he couldn’t get an angle that would let him see the bottom of the man-made chasm that ringed Orion’s fortified financial headquarters. As soon as the trio was clear of the entrance, the gates swung closed behind them.
Heavy doors awaited the trio at the far end of the bridge. The portals opened with a great clanging of retracted bolts and bars, and their inward swing was ponderous. As the doors parted, Picard saw they were more than a meter thick and sheathed entirely in durable-looking metal. He wished he could ask someone more about them, but he doubted any of the bank’s personnel would be forthcoming with specifics regarding its security technology.
The skyscraper’s interior was opulent to the point of being breathtaking. High overhead, the ceiling of its cavernous lobby and first floor was decorated with gold-bordered, intricate murals inspired by ancient Orion myths. Picard beheld his reflection, moving under his feet across the polished marble floors. Priceless paintings and illustrations from across the galaxy adorned the walls, and elegant sculptures stood on white pedestals beneath artful illumination. Great curving staircases, mirror images of each other, dominated either side of the yawning space and led to what appeared to be an even more sumptuous mezzanine.
To Picard’s disappointment, the agents led him past the stairs, into a lower-ceilinged area beneath the mezzanine, and around a corner to a long passageway barred by a manned gate. An Orion inside an armored guard station pressed a button and released the lock on the gate as they drew near. Sinkonnen moved ahead and opened the gate, while th’Neyloh trailed Picard through the checkpoint and closed the gate behind them. During that momentary pause, Picard noted the force field emitters subtly recessed into the walls, floor, and ceiling just past the barrier.
They continued to the end of the interminably long hallway and into a waiting elevator. Sinkonnen keyed in a multicharacter security code, then stared into a retinal scanner to start the lift’s descent. Just as Picard had come to expect of starship turbolifts, the elevator conveyed no sense of movement. The hum of magnetic coils and the faint buzzing of the overhead light were the only sounds inside the car. Then the doors opened, and th’Neyloh led him out into a sublevel with carpeted floors, elegant furniture that would have looked at home in an Earth palace of centuries past, and dozens of pieces of art hailing from cultures spanning known space and eras stretching back more than two millennia. It was as ostentatious a display as any Picard had ever seen promulgated by the Ferengi, but its sense of style was far more subdued and refined.
Sinkonnen stopped at a door, opened it, and ushered Picard through. “In here, sir.”
Picard walked through the doorway to find President Bacco and her chief of staff waiting on the other side. Bacco, a proud, white-haired woman in her eighties, sat in a high-backed, leather-upholstered chair behind a gorgeous desk of carved mahogany. Esperanza Piñiero, an olive-skinned, dark-haired woman in her late fifties, stood to the right of the desk, facing Picard. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted another figure in the room and glanced sideways to see another protection agent dressed in black and gray—a short but powerfully built human man in his forties, with dark hair and a Van Dyke beard. Unlike his colleagues, he wasn’t wearing the wraparound sunglasses. Putting the man out of his thoughts, Picard turned his attention back to his commander-in-chief. “Madam President. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Well, it’s not as if you gave me much choice, did you, Captain?” She waved to the guest chairs in front of her desk. “Sit down.”
He picked the chair on the left and sat down. “I’ve been informed by the Federation Embassy that Lieutenant Commander Data is being held there in Starfleet custody.”
Bacco nodded. “That’s my understanding, as well.”
“What happened?”
With one glance, the president deflected the query to Piñiero. “We’re still looking into that,” said the chief of staff. “He was arrested sometime this morning. We learned of it only an hour ago, but Ambassador Císol assures me that all proper protocols are being observed.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Piñiero met his accusatory stare with cool equanimity. “The Starfleet JAG office has provided him with legal representation, and its Criminal Investigation Division is checking his alibis and comparing them to the limited evidence in hand.”
“Ambassador Císol suggested that Data might be facing murder charges.”
Anxious looks passed between the two politicos. Piñiero remained on point. “Yes.”
“I refuse to believe him capable of such a heinous crime.”
The president’s aspect was grave, her voice empathetic. “This news came as a shock to me, as well, Captain. I’d also like to think it’s not true. But a Starfleet officer is dead, and the evidence in hand suggests a Soong-type android tried to breach the perimeter of this bank in the midst of our summit meeting. What’s more, before Commander Tohm was murdered, she had accessed restricted files regarding this bank and had passed them to Commander Data, only hours before the attempted incursion and her own murder. He’s not being held on a whim.”
“If the charges ag
ainst Mister Data are as serious as you say, he’s entitled to the best possible defense. I’d like to ask that the Enterprise and her crew be tasked to the investigation.”
His plea provoked a cold glare from the president. “To be frank, Captain, I’d prefer you and your ship weren’t here at all. There was a reason I had Leonard”—she paused at a cautionary cough by Piñiero, then corrected herself—“Chief Admiral Akaar send your ship to Azeban. But now that you’re here, the damage is done.” A sigh of resignation. “I’ll ask Captain Bateson to share all sensor data from the break-in with your crew. Though I doubt you’ll find anything his people haven’t—the Enterprise doesn’t have a monopoly on talented officers.”
“I would never suggest that it did, Madam President.” Sensing that his welcome was rapidly expiring, he pressed on to the final item of his agenda. “I’d like to ask your permission for myself and my two senior officers to meet with Commander Data.”
Piñiero asked with cynical suspicion, “And why would we allow that?”
“It’s my understanding that Commander Data has been less than forthcoming, even in confidence to his own defense counsel. Perhaps I or one of my officers could be of assistance. We’ve served with Data for many years. He might be willing to confide in us.” Bacco and Piñiero looked unmoved. “We would, of course, share any actionable intelligence.”
Piñiero glanced at the president, seeking guidance, and was answered with a grudging nod. She looked back at Picard. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Most kind, thank you.” Picard got up and offered his hand to Piñiero, who shook it not with any sign of cordiality but a dry air of requirement. Then he dipped his chin toward Bacco, an old-fashioned gesture of deference. “Madam President.”
She answered him with an impatient lift of one gray eyebrow. “Captain.” Then she looked across the room at her personal protection agent. “Steven, show the captain out.”
“Yes, Madam President.” The agent stepped smartly to the door, which opened as soon as he moved within range of its automated sensor. He fixed his stare on Picard, a hard-eyed look whose silent message would be clear in any language: Get out.
Picard made his exit in silence, his face a mask of confidence, even as he wondered what manner of disaster he’d involved himself in this time.
10
Another day of clueless shareholders and useless subordinates was at long last finished, and Siro Kinshal was glad to be free of them. Free of the meddling inquiries of the board of directors, the banal dilemmas of those who feared to show enough initiative to solve their own problems, and the petty complaints of those who felt their own meager contributions weren’t being hailed with drunken fervor. Kinshal was fed up with the lot of them.
Loosening the collar of his dress shirt, he breathed freely. Coming home was more than a mere temporal milestone in his endless march of days. It was an act of self-liberation, a casting off of oppressive fashion and a reclamation of the man he’d once been but often felt as if he’d forgotten: the artist, the poet, the tender soul who’d chafed at the suggestion of a career in high finance, a life predicated on greed and selfishness. Everything had seemed so easy when he’d been young. All his arguments had felt so pure, so untainted. He missed that sense of sanctity, that great righteousness, the belief that his soul was so pure that it could change the galaxy.
But that had all been nonsense. He saw that now. No one ever changed the galaxy, the world, society. It was all too big, too powerful, too uncaring to bend to the passions of one soul. It was the crucible that broke people down, reduced them to their basest elements, and remade them in its own callous image: the hard and the soulless, the empty and the heartless, the selfish and the cruel. Those were all that ever emerged whole from the fires of the modern world. Everything good, everything noble, everything kind was burned away, turned to slag or smoke, consumed and forgotten. This was the ugly truth of life, of the universe: There was nothing but the now, and you either ruled the now or it ruled you. There was no middle ground.
He stepped through his front door, turned off his apartment’s security alarm, and dropped his briefcase on the floor just past the threshold. That was where he left it each night when he came home. Why bring it an inch farther inside than it needed to be? He never opened it once he was here. Its contents were part of that rotten, merciless, corporate hell he’d left behind on the other side of the city. Why would he ever let that evil contaminate his last refuge? This was his place; work had no dominion here. Damn them, he raged. They steal enough of my life as it is.
Plodding in heavy steps across his living room, he kicked off his shoes one at a time, shed his suit coat, and discarded his necktie with a lazy toss onto the back of the sofa. The maid would police them up and wash them all tomorrow while he was away. He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his trousers on his way into the kitchen.
Kinshal arrived at his replicator nook wearing only his undershirt, his shorts, and his socks. Resting his forehead against the cool blue tiles above the machine, he mumbled through lips numbed by alcohol, “Orroyo.”
The replicator whirred into action, spinning energy and raw mass into a plate of sticky, boiled grains topped with a fatty seafood stew, a traditional Orion favorite. He was especially partial to his machine’s version of the dish, which had been patterned from an original recipe prepared years earlier by his mother. This was as close as replicated fare came to perfection.
Inside a storm of glowing particles, heralded by a musical wash of noise, the delicacy took shape, and he reached for it, eager to recapture a moment of his squandered youth in a mouthful of salty, savory decadence.
A cold wire looped around his throat and sliced into his flesh with brutal force.
Gasping for air he couldn’t find, fighting to scream through his severed larynx, Kinshal clawed at his maimed throat, tried to pull the garrote from his neck. Its wire sliced off his fingertips, which tumbled to the floor between his feet, into the spreading pool of his blood.
He flailed his arms, threw wild backward jabs with his elbows, but found only air.
Vital warmth sheeted down the front of his undershirt as his sight grew dim and his head swam. Afloat in the last wave of his own consciousness, he cast about for answers, for a reason, but found nothing. Nothing but darkness and silence.
Nothing.
• • •
Hain watched the Orion man’s body on the lab’s main screen. When the corpse ceased twitching, she opened a channel to her team in the field. “Berro, he’s dead. You can let go now.”
“I wanted to sever his spinal cord to make sure,” Berro replied over the comm.
“You’ve succeeded. Put him down.” She checked the feed from the other android deployed to Kinshal’s residence. “Sair, get the retinal pattern.”
Sair’s visual feed showed her moving into position above Kinshal’s still-warm body. The android’s face pressed to within inches of the dead Orion’s, and Hain saw its fingers pry open Kinshal’s eyelids as wide as they would go. Then the high-resolution receptors in Sair’s ocular sensors scanned Kinshal’s retinas and transmitted their patterns back to the lab. Hain put the scan through a filter to make sure it was clear enough for their purposes. “That looks good, Sair. You’re clear. Berro, get rid of that body, and make sure you leave his apartment spotless. Our profile on Mister Kinshal says he has a maid who cleans his residence daily. I don’t want her calling the local authorities because she found bloodstains in the lavatory.”
“Understood.” The android agents set to work, moving with tireless efficiency as they removed all traces of their presence from the premises. Berro cooked the man’s corpse into sludge with a few packets of concentrated bioreactive acid and flushed the watery sludge down the shower drain. Sair sprayed the apartment with an aerosol of nanites that would break down any incriminating fibers, and then dissociate themselves into innocuous carbon atoms. Within minutes of the murder of Kinshal, there was no evidence that the crime ha
d ever occurred.
Hain added the retinal scans to her biometric profile of Kinshal, a file that encompassed everything from his DNA and his body-mass distribution to his voiceprint and now his retinal patterns. Those had been the last pieces of the puzzle, ones whose acquisition had been postponed until the latest possible moment. But with the SRD pressuring Operation Zelazo into premature action, the timetable for Kinshal’s demise had been accelerated. The next day of operations would determine the mission’s outcome—and Hain knew that failure was not an outcome her superiors would be willing to accept.
Satisfied her profile on Kinshal was complete, she reopened the channel to her agents. “Wrap it up and get out of there. As soon as the new template’s ready, we’ll begin Phase Two.”
11
Had he not seen it with his own eyes, Worf would not have believed such a facility was part of a Federation embassy. The secure sublevel of the diplomatic headquarters on Orion was as bleak and austere a place as he had ever visited. Its sublevel was defined by bare walls and floors of thermocrete, as well as hardened portals that seemed better suited to a Klingon maximum security prison. Of course, that’s what this rarely mentioned area of the embassy was: a prison.
Armed Starfleet officers assigned to the embassy guarded the door to the interrogation room in which Data was being held. As the human ensign entered a code to unlock and open the door, the Bolian lieutenant supervising him warned the trio from the Enterprise, “Be careful. The prisoner’s restraints have been removed. If he gives you any trouble, we’ll be right outside.”
Worf suppressed his impulse to gut the Bolian. “We will not need you.”
The door opened. Picard entered first, and Worf followed him inside, trailed closely by La Forge. As soon as all three of them were inside the cramped room, the guards closed and locked the door behind them.
