by Dayton Ward
Fools! Will they ever come to see their own transience, held before them in the grasp of our enemies as they conspire and plot and plan? What will it take to make them open their eyes?
Pausing before his window, Ishan allowed his gaze to wander over the scene before him. In the streets of Paris, life was playing out for the millions of people who called the city home, but he knew that beneath that supposed tranquility flowed an undercurrent of insecurity. That feeling was mirrored in cities across the planet and worlds throughout the Federation. The past several years of conflict and political turmoil had done much to undermine the quality of life promised to every citizen. The time had come to put to rest—once and for all—the question of the Federation’s place in galactic affairs. Peace was the objective, of course, though such peace had to be buttressed not simply through perceived strength, but also a willingness to use that strength in order for the citizens of the Federation to be free to live without fear. Such peace had been denied for far too long.
No longer, Ishan vowed.
Thirty-four
U.S.S. Enterprise
Picard emerged from his ready room and looked to the main viewscreen, upon which was displayed an image of stars streaking past as the Enterprise continued on its course. All around the bridge, his officers were immersed in their respective tasks, and there was an air of renewed concern mixed with a slight yet still palpable tension. Worf, sitting in the command chair, rose upon seeing Picard.
“Report, Number One,” the captain said, crossing the bridge to the forward conn and ops stations.
“Our sensors are detecting another vessel on a course for Jevalan, traveling at maximum warp,” replied the officer, ramrod straight after moving to stand before his own seat to the right of Picard’s chair. “Its transponder identifies it as the U.S.S. Tonawanda. We have attempted to contact it per your instructions. So far it has refused to acknowledge, though we can confirm that it is receiving our hails.”
Drawing a slow, deep breath as he considered the situation and how it might evolve over the next several minutes, Picard nodded. “They’re maintaining communications silence.” Will Riker had warned him that this likely would be the case, in that the captain of the Tonawanda, S’hirethal Verauk, was operating under orders restricting her transmissions only to authorized personnel for the duration of this mission. “She’ll continue to do that, unless we can find a way to convince her otherwise.”
Having never met his counterpart on the other vessel, Picard’s only knowledge of her was what he had been able to glean from a library computer search of her personnel file. Promoted well ahead of schedule thanks to the need to replenish the ranks of starship captains following the costly Borg invasion, Verauk’s record was that of a solid, dependable officer. As Admiral Riker had intimated during their earlier conversation while apprising Picard of the Tonawanda being routed to Jevalan, Verauk had no qualms about airing her feelings with respect to what she perceived as Starfleet’s role in ensuring the Federation’s security. Picard harbored little doubt that her stance was motivated in no small part by the loss of her family and her entire planet during the Borg assault.
“Glinn Dygan, what’s our estimated arrival time at Jevalan?”
Obviously anticipating the query, the young Cardassian exchange officer replied without hesitation, “We’ll be entering the Doltiri system in twenty-seven minutes, sir, and will be in position to assume standard orbit twelve minutes after that.”
“What about the Tonawanda?” Worf asked.
Dygan replied, “They will make orbit approximately fourteen minutes ahead of us, Commander.”
Glancing over his shoulder to the tactical station, Picard said, “Lieutenant Šmrhová, try hailing the Dordogne again.” Previous attempts to reach the runabout had been unsuccessful, and the Enterprise still was too far away to attempt contacting the away team via their personal communicators. Picard forced himself to say nothing, silently counting off the seconds he knew would be needed for the security chief to complete her latest attempt. He waited that interval and not a moment longer before once again looking to her, only to see the lieutenant shaking her head.
“No response, sir, and no indication they’re even receiving our hails.”
At the science station, Lieutenant Dina Elfiki turned in her chair. “Captain, if the runabout is on the surface in an area with a high concentration of particular mineral ore deposits, that may be affecting their communications, but we won’t be able to confirm that until we’re closer.”
Stepping forward until he stood between the conn and ops stations, Picard crossed his arms. With the Enterprise still en route and without being able to contact Beverly and the others, it seemed there remained but one course of action. “Open a channel to the Tonawanda.”
After a moment, Šmrhová reported, “Channel open, sir. I can confirm that they’re receiving.”
“U.S.S. Tonawanda, this is Captain Picard of the Enterprise. I know that you’re traveling to Jevalan under classified orders issued by President Ishan and that those orders call for you to restrict your communications. I must inform you that the orders you’ve received are unsanctioned by Starfleet Command and may well be illegal. I’m requesting a conference so that we may discuss the matter person to person. Please acknowledge.”
After several seconds had passed, Šmrhová said, “No response, sir. The Tonawanda is maintaining course and speed.”
Moving to stand next to him, Worf said in a low voice, “It is doubtful that Captain Verauk will break comm silence without sufficient justification.”
“Perfectly understandable, given the circumstances,” Picard said, weighing those few options remaining to him. Louder, he called out, “Captain Verauk, I have reason to believe that your orders call for you to take into custody one or more Starfleet officers assumed to be on the planet’s surface.”
Once you cross this line, there may be no going back.
Glancing to Worf—whose stern expression told him that the Klingon, as always, would stand by him regardless of whatever might happen next—Picard returned his gaze to the viewscreen and its field of onrushing stars.
“Captain Verauk, if these are your orders, then you need to know that I am prepared to do everything in my power to prevent you from apprehending these individuals.”
Jevalan, Doltiri System
Her lungs burned, her muscles ached, and she thought her heart might explode through her chest, but Beverly Crusher kept walking, one tired foot in front of the other. How long had they been moving at this rapid pace? Twenty or thirty minutes, she guessed. Though she followed a regular fitness regimen, exercising in the ship’s gymnasium or on the holodeck could not compare to the sustained exertion required to navigate the narrow, winding, dust-choked tunnels of the mining complex. Then there was the added burden of assisting her friend Ilona Daret, older and frailer than she and who already was feeling the effects of their prolonged navigation of the underground passageways. She had one of the elder Cardassian’s arms slung across her shoulders, and she was doing what she could to support his weight, but the effort was beginning to take its toll.
Maybe you’re just getting too old for this kind of nonsense.
“How much farther?” she asked between sharp intakes of breath.
Ahead of them, a tricorder in one hand and a phaser in the other, Tom Riker replied, “Another few minutes, if I’m reading this thing right. Hang in there.” Though his scanning device was all but useless at this depth, owing to the concentration of mineral deposits permeating the rock around them, Daret had taken the precaution of loading to the team’s tricorders his copy of the mine’s tunnel map. There also was the bundle of cables, wound together and suspended from the wall near the ceiling, which acted as something of a guide. The cables, used at this depth to power the work lights and other equipment, had to lead somewhere, right?
Looking over his shoulder, Tom asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to take him? You can lead the way.”
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“No, I’ve got him.” If they encountered trouble while making their way to the rally point where Konya and Cruzen were waiting for them, she wanted Tom to be the one with the phaser and ready to engage. Crusher glanced at Daret, whose breathing now was even more labored than it had been moments earlier. “How are you doing? Going to make it?”
“Yes,” replied the Cardassian, “thanks to you.” He forced a small, tired smile. “A vacation would not go unnoticed or unappreciated, however.”
“I’ll see what we can do,” Crusher said, looking up as they traversed a bend in the passageway. The tunnel was widening now, and there was a stronger source of light somewhere ahead of them. “Almost there, I think.”
The tunnel gave way to a larger chamber, which to Crusher’s eye looked to approximate the size of the Enterprise’s shuttlebay. Like the rest of the underground passages, the room had been carved from the dense rock and was supplied with illumination via power lines running through the tunnels to generators and routers located on the surface. Piles of rubble had been pushed against the walls, which ascended in order to form a high, domed ceiling. The remnants of mining equipment and other detritus littered the cavern floor; cargo containers and metal bins intermixed with clusters of rock and debris. The air here was cool yet stale, and she heard the sounds of water dripping somewhere in the distance. Studying the walls, Crusher saw where smaller ledges and tunnels had been cut into the rock, some of which were accessible from the floor by means of ladders or rope and pulley systems supporting an oversized metal cart. Positioned along the cavern’s perimeter were a dozen rectangular structures resting on metal frames that served to elevate them several meters above the rock floor.
“Guard towers,” Tom said. He pointed to one of them. “You can see the weapon mounts along the railing.”
Movement from one of the other tunnels leading out of the chamber caught Crusher’s attention, and she looked over to see Rennan Konya and Kirsten Cruzen waving at them as they approached.
“Might want to watch your step,” Cruzen said by way of greeting. “We’ve been busy while we were waiting for you.” Nodding to Tom, she added, “Mister Riker gave us some helpful pointers.”
Tom asked, “Did you have any luck breaking the encryption on those communicators you took from them?”
“No,” Konya replied. “Whatever they’re using, it’s top of the line. I’ve never seen anything like it. If I had access to the runabout’s onboard computer, I might have a better chance at cracking the codes, but otherwise?” He shook his head. “Besides, I figure in a little while, it won’t really matter.” As he moved toward Crusher and gestured that he would help with Daret, the lieutenant smiled. “So, it’s a good thing you’re the ones who got here first.”
“Why’s that?” Crusher asked.
Slipping his arm around the elder Cardassian’s waist, the security officer smiled. “We’ve laid out a few presents for our friends. Come on; we’ve got a nice perch all set up and ready to go.”
With Cruzen keeping an eye on the tunnels leading into the chamber, Konya and Tom assisted Crusher and Daret onto one of the lift carts before working the ropes and pulleys to hoist the cart from the floor. It took only a few moments to raise the cart to one of the tunnel openings higher up on the wall, after which Cruzen used one of the ropes to make her own climb. That accomplished, they secured the lift cart before the security officers led them away from the exposed tunnel entrance to another area carved out of the wall. Crusher saw at once the desirability of the location, as it afforded a view of the entire cavern floor while offering a decent place of concealment.
“That’s our emergency escape route,” Konya said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the tunnel behind him, which penetrated even deeper into the rock. “According to Doctor Daret’s map, it’ll take us to the surface at the north end of the camp, near where the Cardassians used to have their support base.”
Crusher asked, “What if they use that path to get down here?”
“Then they’re not going to like the surprise I left them,” Cruzen answered.
Tom said, “They don’t have enough people to cover all the exits, and they’re going to want to take care of us without attracting attention. They’ll want to find us down here, and that means they’re going to want to get down here as quickly as possible. I’m betting they found their own copy of a map, too. It’s what I’d do, and they may even figure out where we might decide to hide or make a stand. There aren’t that many options, after all. What I’m counting on is them thinking of you as if you’re Starfleet officers.”
“They are Starfleet officers,” Daret said. To Crusher, he asked, “You’ve not yet retired, have you?”
“Been thinking about it,” Crusher replied. “Been thinking about it a lot, particularly over the last half hour.”
Tom smiled. “What I mean is that if these guys think of you as Starfleet officers, then they may be expecting you to think and react in a certain way.” He tapped his chest with a finger. “Me, on the other hand? They weren’t expecting somebody like me, and I don’t think they’ve quite figured me out just yet.”
“What exactly are you, Mister Riker?” Daret asked.
His smile fading, Tom replied, “Trouble.”
* * *
Alternating his attention between his tricorder and the tunnel intersection before him, Jacob Barrows grunted in approval.
“This is right on the money.”
“Our sensors are still experiencing interference thanks to all the mineral deposits,” said the voice of Captain S’hirethal Verauk, commanding officer of the Tonawanda and Barrows’s unexpected new ally for this assignment. “We can’t pinpoint individual life signs, but we can detect the presence of anyone in the mining complex. It should still be enough to get you where you need to go.”
“Affirmative,” Barrows replied. “I’ll be in touch. Out.” He tapped the control to sever the connection. He was surprised at first by the abrupt communication with the Starfleet captain, but Verauk had offered the correct security code: the one Admiral Schlosser had told him to expect when his courier made contact to take charge of Daret. Barrows had been expecting not to interact with the Tonawanda until they had captured the Cardassian and were well away from Jevalan, but he figured that circumstances of which he was not aware had changed. He did not care, as experience had taught him to be flexible during covert missions and to adapt to evolving situations even when he might not possess all key facts. For example, there had been no contact with the team sent to delay or disable the Enterprise with the Andorian freighter. Had they been successful, or had they encountered their own set of complications? What if the Enterprise crew had managed to evade the trap that had been set for them? There was no sense dwelling on such things, Barrows knew; he had his own issues with which to contend. For the moment, it was good that Verauk and the Tonawanda now were here and that their sensors were able to assist him in his search for Daret.
So, let’s get on with it.
Tapping the control for the communicator pinned inside his jacket, Barrows said, “Alpha One to Alpha Two.”
“Go for Two,” said the voice of Tobias Paquette, just audible over the static-laden connection.
“I’m getting close to the large chamber on our maps. Where are you?”
Paquette replied, “If I’m reading this right, we’re within fifty meters of it. We’ve been following the schematic as well as the cables strung up everywhere. We should be there in a minute or so.” Along with Fredil Pars, the Bajoran using the call sign Alpha Three, Paquette was approaching the cavern from another tunnel based on information the team had retrieved by infiltrating the excavation crew’s computer network. The other four members of his team, each divided into pairs, were advancing on the same position from different directions, with Barrows’s plan being to surround the Starfleet interlopers.
“Good,” Barrows said. “Hold up once you get there. We’ll move in together.” Repeating the s
tatus checks with the remaining teams only served to remind him that two members of his group, the Bajoran Contera Hilbis and her human partner, Miguel Aguilar, still were missing. Barrows had sent them ahead to the Olanda camp to scout the area while the rest of the Active Six contingent performed similar tasks at the Pencala camp and some of the smaller outposts scattered across the planet. When they had failed to make their scheduled check-in, Barrows had wasted no time collecting the rest of his team and converging on the Olanda camp.
Once there, it had taken little time to find the transport vehicle Ilona Daret had taken from Tabata. A casual investigation of the area and the people manning the excavation and forensics efforts had turned up a few people who recalled seeing humans and a Cardassian moving around the dig site and even the general area where they had been seen. Comparing this information with the data he had taken from the computer files belonging to Raal Mosara had led Barrows to believe that whatever materials Daret was protecting had to be located somewhere here in the remnants of the camp where he and his Bajoran companion had been working.
Finding them, in comparison, was proving to be quite the challenge.
The plan at first had been to conduct a simple sweep of the mine after staging a pretense to evacuate the surrounding area. Breaking into the computer network set up by the recovery team was easy enough, as was triggering the alarm warning the camp residents of a gas leak somewhere in the mine. Sneaking aboard one of the transports at the camp’s landing port, they had used its sensors to determine the general location of five life signs inside the mine’s underground tunnel network: four humans and a Cardassian. Armed with that information and the knowledge that there only were a handful of exits from that level of the mine, Barrows had split his group into pairs so that they could attempt to converge on the Starfleet team. Though the task had begun lacking any sort of real-time updates from the transport’s sensor array, their efforts now were aided by the timely arrival of Captain Verauk and the Tonawanda.
