by Dave Stern
Ambassador Valay emerged from behind one of the stones. Two men stepped out with her.
“I’m afraid time is what you no longer have, gentlemen.”
Reed had reached for his phase pistol the instant he’d heard a noise. The grip in his hand, he started to raise it and fire—
And saw that the two men with Valay both held weapons, pointed straight at him and the Commodore.
He lowered his.
“Good,” Valay said. “But better to drop it entirely—in my direction.”
He did as she asked. Valay picked up the pistol, not taking her eyes off him the entire time.
Roan had turned a split second after Reed. Now he faced Valay, and the others, and his eyes widened in surprise.
“Kellan? Ash? You’re with her?”
“After what you have done?” The man who’d spoken took another step forward, the gun in his hand shaking. His anger was palpable. “You dare ask that?”
“What I’ve done?” He glared at Valay. “Kellan, what lies has she been telling you?”
“That you had made cause with the humans—sold them the secrets of our technology in exchange for money.”
“It is a lie.”
“We have been tracking you since you landed,” Kellan said. “You took this man to the scientists’ quarters, and then here.”
Reed frowned. They hadn’t picked up any sign at all of the ambassador’s ship leaving orbit.
And all of a sudden he knew why. The phondrikaar. Valay’s ship was a Striker—Roan had said that material, impervious to their sensors, had been incorporated into the hulls of all such ships.
“I have fought for Sarkassia for all my life—you think I could ever betray us?” Roan asked. “Reed is here only because he wants to find out what happened to his crewman, and I agreed to—”
“What is this, then?” Valay asked.
She held up the small storage container that Roan had set down on the ground next to him.
Reed’s heart leapt into his mouth.
The phondrikaar.
She opened the container, and held up its contents for the others to see.
“I think Kellan can tell who has our people’s interest at heart, Commodore,” Valay said.
“No!” Roan said. “This is not what it seems—they are returning this material to us. Lieutenant Reed will verify that.”
Reed nodded. “He’s telling the truth.”
“Do you take us all for fools? Of course you’re returning the phondrikaar—now that you’ve finished studying it.” Valay shook her head. “Butcher is no longer the appropriate name to cover your crimes. We must add another one, Commodore. Traitor.”
“I am no traitor,” Roan said. “Let us contact the Executive Council, and see who the traitor is.”
“And in times of war,” Valay continued, ignoring him, “there is only one penalty for traitors.”
She held up the phase pistol.
And then, to Reed’s astonishment, she adjusted the setting on the weapon. As expertly, as naturally, as if she’d been trained on it.
Reed stared at her in open-mouthed surprise. There was no way she could know how to do that. How—
Valay raised the weapon again and fired.
The beam struck Roan square in the chest, and the Commodore vanished in a haze of energy.
“Commodore!” Reed cried, taking a step forward.
“Stop.”
Reed looked up to see Kellan pointing his weapon directly at him.
“Stay where you are.”
Valay turned to him.
“Under Sarkassian law,” she said. “The penalty for those who collaborate in an act of treason is the same.”
She raised the phase pistol again.
Reed tensed.
What was it they said was supposed to happen before you died? Your life flashed before your eyes?
He waited.
And then, as if coming from far off in the distance, he heard Trip’s voice, echoing in his mind.
Twenty-Two
ARMORY
1/15/2151 0110 HOURS
“WHY DON’T YOU DRAG a cot in, at least?”
Reed was staring at the firing console. He looked up and saw Trip standing in the door to the armory, framed by the dim lights of the corridor behind him. He hadn’t even heard the door open.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t believe this is your department.”
“Har har.” Trip stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind him. “You know what time it is?”
“About one.”
“About a little after one. What are you doing that’s so all-fired important it can’t wait till morning?”
“My job.”
“Meaning—”
“Meaning I don’t like being sandwiched in between two enemy ships waiting for a third to show up and leave us even more outgunned.”
“So—”
“So I’m using some of the data we picked up from sensor readings to run a few combat simulations—just in case.”
“So how we doin’?”
“Not well—yet.” Which was an understatement—in all the scenarios Reed had run, Enterprise only managed to inflict minimal damage to one of the Sarkassian ships before the others ganged up and destroyed her. “I’ve got some ideas, though.”
“I’ve got some ideas, too,” Trip said. “Number one being, there’s a reason they call ’em ambassadors, and not soldiers. You know what I’m saying? Valay—as obnoxious as she might sound—is coming to talk, not to fight.”
“Just covering all the bases,” Reed said. “As I mentioned—it is my job.”
“Your departments job,” Trip said. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Santini’s on station on the bridge. Everyone else is asleep.”
“Ah-hah.”
“Don’t worry, Trip. I’ll be joining them soon enough.”
“All right then.”
Reed entered a few more variables into the simulation. He wished he knew more about the Sarkassian ship’s capabilities at impulse—how much power their weapons drew off the warp engines, and how dependent they were on that.
When he looked up, Trip was still standing there.
“What?”
“Been meaning to ask you,” his friend said quietly, in a different tone of voice altogether. “How’s Hart?”
She’s dead, Reed started to say.
Except she wasn’t. Not yet. This was the past. And he was—
Down on the outpost. Inside the pyramid.
Valay held the phase pistol on him, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Not with this,” she said, and lowered the weapon.
He blinked, and he was back in the armory, Trip standing next to him, looking over his shoulder at the console monitor.
“That didn’t work either,” he said, pointing at the screen, as Enterprise was destroyed again in yet another combat simulation. “What else you got up your sleeve?”
Reed stood stock-still a moment, not answering.
This was just a memory—a moment in time he was reliving. But he’d never experienced anything like this before, never recalled the past with this kind of intensity in his life. Sleep deprivation was not an excuse for these kinds of hallucinations. Something was happening to him. Something that had to do with the change that had come over Alana, and Valay, and the secrets hidden inside the Sarkassian outpost.
He heard the door behind him open, and looked up.
Trip was gone.
Alana stood in the doorway.
His heart sank. He knew where he was, when he was, and what was about to happen next. And nothing he could do would change it.
He had to relive the next few moments, like a prisoner in his own body.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “What are you doing awake, for that matter?”
She looked surprised to see him as well.
“I wanted to see the armory,” she said.
She was still wearing h
er gown from sickbay.
“Phlox didn’t let you out, did he?”
She didn’t answer him, just stepped forward into the room, one hand held behind her, as if she was hiding something.
The door hissed shut behind her.
Reed shook his head. “You wanted to see the armory, now you’ve seen it. Now you’ve got to get back to sickbay, Alana, you’re not—”
He was perhaps four feet away when she took her hand out from behind her back.
She was holding a metal pipe—or a piece of metal that looked like a pipe, something perhaps a foot long, an inch thick ...
Tubing from the diagnostic cot? Or—
She lunged forward, and caught him square across the head with it.
He staggered back, she swung again, and caught him on the head again.
Reed collapsed on the floor, and lay there a moment, stunned.
Blood trickled down his face.
Alana walked past him, heading toward the firing console.
His head pounded. His vision swam—but through the haze, he saw the lights on the console flicker in an all-too-familiar pattern, and realized instantly what Alana was doing.
She was bringing Enterprise’s weapons on-line.
“Don’t,” he mumbled, trying to get to his feet, and failing.
His vision swam.
Inside the pyramid, Valay turned to Kellan.
“Give me your weapon,” she said.
Reed swayed on his feet. His head reeled. Past and present, memory and reality, were all merging together into one.
“Ambassador?” Kellan said hesitantly. “Why—”
“Lieutenant, give me your weapon,” Valay commanded. “Now.”
Kellan lowered his arm, and turned toward her.
Now, Reed thought. Jump him. Now, you can—
He was in the armory, on his hands and knees.
Alana had charged the ship’s weapons. It was madness. The Sarkassians would see that, and charge theirs. They were seconds away from a catastrophic battle. And then, almost certainly—
An even more catastrophic war.
“Stop,” he shouted, but it came out as no more than a mumble again. “Alana, stop!”
She paid no attention to him.
Reed groaned, and tried to crawl forward. The firing console was fifty feet away from him. Too far, he realized instantly. He’d never make it.
The com blared.
“Bridge to armory, report. O’Neill to Reed, report! What is happening? Why have you charged weapons?”
Weapons, Reed realized. The weapons lockers were right behind him.
Reed turned, and pried open the nearest one. A phase pistol case, bright metallic blue, about the size of an old-fashioned ledger, tumbled onto the floor. He popped open the case and pulled out one of the phase pistols, and set it to stun.
“Bridge to armory, stand down weapons. Repeat, stand down.”
Reed raised the phase pistol, and turned toward the console again.
That’s when he saw that Alana was doing more than charging the weapons. She was targeting them on the Sarkassian ship.
“Stop!” he cried, loud enough this time that she heard him.
She turned, and saw him holding the phase pistol.
She picked up the pipe again, and headed straight for him.
Reed didn’t have time to do anything other than react, and squeeze the trigger.
The blast caught her square in the stomach.
Her momentum carried her forward, and she crashed to the floor, the pipe clattering off toward one of the torpedo bays.
Her outstretched hand touched his, and their eyes met.
For an instant, he thought he saw the old Alana, thought he heard her speak to him.
Help.
And in that split-second, the wave of memories he had been experiencing all day overwhelmed him, became a flood, a whirlwind of moments flashing past in his mind.
He saw himself in the armory, on New Year’s Eve, confronting Alana for an explanation of the Dinai incident, and then he was—
In her quarters, seeing the Corbett on her shelf, and then—
Back in the armory, standing an arm’s length away from her, and then they were kissing, and suddenly Reed was aware that he was seeing himself through her eyes, and that the memories he was reliving were not just his, they were Alana’s too, that was the only explanation for what he was experiencing, though it was really no explanation at all as to why he should be reliving moments from her past. But he was, he was—
Standing at attention in the captains ready room, listening to Archer’s “Welcome aboard Enterprise” talk, and then he was—
On board the shuttlepod, heading for the Sarkassian outpost, and then—
Inside the pyramid, studying the tricorder intently, then—
Frozen in place, unable to move, back against one of the stones, and looming before him, eyes cold and unforgiving, a cruel smile twisting his face—
Goridian.
And then, everything went black.
Twenty-Three
SARKASSIAN OUTPOST
1/17/2151 1323 HOURS
HE WAS BACK in the pyramid.
Valay had the particle weapon in her right hand, and was pointing it directly at him. The phase pistol was in her left, held at her side. Kellan and Ash flanked her.
“Goodbye, Lieutenant Reed.” The ambassador raised her weapon.
The sight of the gun pointing at him was like a splash of ice water in his face, forcing the past—and the memories that came with it—from his mind.
This was reality, Reed realized. His last few seconds of it, if he didn’t do something.
“You want war?” he shouted suddenly. “Is that what you really want?”
He spoke to Valay, but the person he wanted to reach was Kellan.
“War?” The ambassador smiled. “Let it come. I suspect your forces are already preparing an offensive using the knowledge they gained from the commodore. In which case, our best course of action is an immediate attack.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Reed saw Kellan step forward.
“War with Starfleet, Ambassador? We do not know how extensively their forces are spread throughout this region, nor how powerful their weapons are. Caution is advised.”
“I know all about their weapons,” Valay replied, not moving an inch. “Enterprise has phase cannons. Enterprise has photon torpedoes, Enterprise has plasma charges. None of which are a threat to a fully shielded Striker—much less two.”
Reed was stunned into silence for a second. He tried to cover.
“You’ve left a few things out of our inventory, I’m afraid,” he said, though Valay had, in fact, hit the nail right on the head when it came to listing their weapons. He wondered how.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think that covers everything.”
He looked in her eyes and saw the certainty there.
So he turned to Kellan.
“We don’t want a war. And from what I heard you saying, it’s not your first choice either. So trust your instincts, Kellan,” Reed said. “Talk to your leaders—make sure Valay doesn’t force your people down a road you don’t want to take.”
“Here and now, Ambassador Valay speaks for our leaders,” he said. “She is their voice.”
The words, for some reason, rang a bell with Reed. He didn’t have time to figure out why, though.
“I would think that when it came to a matter of such importance, they’d want to speak for themselves—don’t you? Funny how she won’t let them, though.”
Kellan looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“The jamming beam.”
“The beam is there to prevent Roan from calling in others who may have been allied with him to betray our people.”
“He’s dead. Why do you need it now?”
Kellan’s brow furrowed in thought.
“Call your government,” Reed stepped forward, sensing he’d gotten through to him, a
t least a little bit. He locked eyes with the man. “Get instructions from them.”
Valay stepped between the two of them.
“Very clever, Lieutenant,” she said. “But I hardly think the colonel and I can be expected to forget that the jamming beam also prevents you from calling in your reinforcements as well.”
“Our reinforcements?”
“The Shi’ar. Or have you forgotten about your rendezvous with her?”
This time, Reed didn’t even bother to conceal his surprise.
“How on Earth ... you can’t know that.”
She smiled. “I know things you can’t imagine.”
The way she said those words—he believed her.
His mind raced—there was no one he’d shared the information on the Shi’ar with, no way Valay could have accessed that data while she was on Enterprise unless she’d hacked into the most secure areas of their computer system, and he didn’t think that was possible. But even assuming it was—that would have meant Ambassador Valay had planned this, or something like this even before she’d come aboard.
The thought made his head spin.
“We could partially disable the jamming beam, Ambassador,” Kellan said hesitantly. “Give ourselves one of the lower frequencies to use, to contact the Council.”
“Kellan,” Valay said disapprovingly. “Think for a moment. Why would the lieutenant here want us to shut off the beam? Could it be that they have a device actively scanning the EM spectrum, looking for a way to break through and call reinforcements? Of course they do—which is why we cannot relax our guard for an instant.”
“Yes, Ambassador,” Kellan said. But he sounded skeptical. Reed couldn’t blame him—Valay’s reasoning sounded forced and faulty to him as well.
There was something very wrong going on here. Something that went beyond the civil war Reed thought he was caught in the middle of.
Kellan was still frowning.
Valay cast a sideways glance at him, and shifted.
“There may be a way to send a Relayer past the range of the jamming beam, Ambassador. Let me call the Amileus and—”
Valay spun and shot him with the phase pistol that was suddenly in her right hand.
