“I want you to investigate T’Jul,” Kamemor said. “Let’s make sure that her presence on the two missions wasn’t the result of chance. And if it’s not, then I want to know who her compatriots are—beyond the Empire, but most especially within it.”
“I’ll start on it at once.”
“Is there anything else I need to know?” Kamemor asked.
“No, Praetor,” Sela said. The operation had failed, but at least the chairwoman would not need to contend with the complications that would have arisen had any of the personnel or vessels involved been captured.
“Keep me informed,” Kamemor said.
Sela nodded her acknowledgment, then stepped back and headed for the doors. One of the guards opened them for her, and she exited into the courtyard. In seconds, she had picked up her security detail and started back through the underground tunnel that had brought her to the praetor’s audience chamber.
By the time she boarded the shuttle that would return her to her office at Tal Shiar headquarters, she’d already decided to move forward with her next attempt to obtain the quantum slipstream drive from the Federation.
2
Federation President Nan Bacco tried to calm her rising anger as she stared across the room at Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies in its ornate gilt frame. The impressionist painting, she knew, had endured for nearly five centuries, surviving three world wars and more attacks on Earth than she could probably list. Oil-based pigments on a simple piece of canvas, not quite a meter wide, and even shorter along its vertical dimension, it had been painted by a man after whom the situation room in the Palais de la Concorde had been named. Bacco had often wondered what Claude Monet would have thought about his idyllic creation adorning a place too often given over to conducting the business of war. As she peered at the artwork that morning, though, she thought about the fact that it antedated the United Federation of Planets by more than a century and a half. And with the way we’re going, Bacco thought, I’m not sure we’re going to last as long as the painting has.
“One thousand ninety-one,” she said, still seething as she looked back down at Admiral Akaar and repeated the number he had just supplied. “Is that the final count?”
“It’s close,” Akaar said. He sat directly across from Bacco at the large, round conference table that went a long way to filling the floor space of the situation room. Starfleet’s commander-in-chief, Akaar had notified the president of the shocking events at Deep Space 9. “The ships have canvassed the Bajoran system in search of other sections of the station that might have survived its breakup. It’s still conceivable that they could find more survivors, but the rescue effort has been so extensive that such a possibility is dimming.”
“Do we have a breakdown?” Bacco asked. “How many civilians, how many Starfleet officers?”
Akaar reached forward and picked up a personal access display device from the tabletop. Reading from it, he said, “Four hundred sixty-one civilians dead or missing, six hundred thirty Starfleet personnel.” He set the padd back down, though he continued studying its display. “That’s strictly from the station. We also have thirty-two dead on board the Robinson, two from a runabout, and an unknown number of casualties aboard civilian ships.” He looked up then and fixed the president with what she recognized as an earnest expression. With Akaar’s enormous size—a Capellan, he stood more than two and a quarter meters tall, and carried a toned physique to complement his height—his stare equated to a viselike hold. “The crews managed to evacuate or rescue more than fifty-five hundred people from Deep Space Nine. Considering the circumstances—two bombs detonating and three Typhon Pact starships attacking—that’s a remarkable accomplishment.”
The president nodded, not so much an agreement as an automatic response while she tried to process everything that had happened at Bajor. Beneath the outrage she felt at the duplicity of the Typhon Pact leaders—and of Praetor Kamemor in particular—Bacco also felt extreme fatigue. She had always understood—or thought she had—that the presidency would bring with it tremendous pressure, but the almost unremitting nature of it throughout her term had worn her down. She often joked about escaping the burdens of her position by not standing for reelection, but with all that had happened, she had begun to seriously think about the prospect of stepping aside.
Not that there’s any guarantee that I’d get reelected anyway, she thought. Would citizens consider her record and decide that the Federation had finally and permanently beaten back the Borg threat during her administration, or would they say that the Borg had killed more than sixty billion people on her watch? Would they see her as the leader who stood up to the new and continuing threat of the Typhon Pact, or as the woman who allowed a founding member of the UFP to secede?
And what will they think if I take us into another war? The Dominion, the Borg, the Typhon Pact—maybe the Federation needed to ask itself why it had so many adversaries. And the Pact doesn’t even count as just a single enemy, but as six, Bacco thought. Or at least five, since we don’t really have much of a history with the Kinshaya. But the Breen, the Tholians, the Tzenkethi, the Gorn, and the Romulans had all been clashing with the UFP for a long time.
Except that I’d thought things had gotten better, Bacco thought. With all of the Pact worlds, but especially with the Gorn and the Romulans. After all, the praetor had approached Bacco with a proposal for a Khitomer Accords–Typhon Pact summit, and when the Boslics had subsequently hosted such a gathering, Kamemor had spearheaded efforts to move all the players away from even a cold-war footing and toward peaceful coexistence.
But that wasn’t really what she did, Bacco thought resentfully. Obviously, I was set up. We were all set up.
The silence in the room suddenly penetrated Bacco’s thoughts, and she realized that everybody present waited for her to take the lead in the meeting. She looked around the table at the others: her chief of staff, two members of her cabinet, and a second Starfleet admiral seated beside Akaar. The president glanced at Esperanza Piñiero, who sat beside her, making notes on a padd. Then Bacco took a deep breath and said, “The Typhon Pact has committed an act of war, but it seems unlikely that they actually want war. And I know that we don’t. So why did the Typhon Pact do this?”
“Whatever their reason, they haven’t announced it to us or to anybody else,” said Jas Abrik. A Trill who had once served in Starfleet, rising to the rank of admiral, he served as security advisor to the president. “There’s been no public word on events from any of the Pact governments, and none of our sources have picked up even any private discussions.”
“Frankly, I don’t care what they say,” Bacco avowed. “I care about the reality of the situation. I want to know what their true motives were.”
Across the table from the president, Admiral Alynna Nechayev glanced up at Akaar, who offered her a curt nod. “We can’t be sure,” said Nechayev. “It’s possible that they set out to do precisely what they accomplished in destroying Deep Space Nine. Or they might have sought to secure the entrance to the wormhole for themselves.”
“Is that really a possibility, that they wanted to take possession of the wormhole?” asked Raisa Shostakova, the Federation’s secretary of defense. Her peculiarly short stature and poor posture betrayed her status as a native of the human colony on the high-gravity world of Pangea. “I don’t see how they could reasonably hope to accomplish that with just three starships. Even if they’d managed to defeat the Starfleet forces there, how could the crews of three vessels realistically expect to hold a position against the might that Starfleet would throw against them?”
“Controlling the wormhole could be something they needed to do only temporarily in the pursuit of some other goal,” Nechayev suggested.
“Or the Pact might have intended to send reinforcements,” said Safranski, a Rigelian and the secretary of the exterior.
“We’ve seen no other incursions into Federation space,” noted Shostakova, “and no massing of ships along our borders.�
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“We did not see the incursion into our territory of the three Pact starships that attacked Deep Space Nine,” Akaar said, “because we were not meant to do so.” The laconic admiral often said little during meetings, which lent additional weight to those things that he chose to say.
“So you believe that we’re on the cusp of an invasion of cloaked ships?” Bacco asked, aghast at the thought of the Federation returning to war.
“No,” said Akaar. “At least, not an invasion exclusively by the Typhon Pact.”
“What?” Safranski exclaimed. “Then by who?”
But Bacco discerned Akaar’s reasoning. “The Dominion,” she said. She stumbled over the words, not wanting even to think them, let alone utter them. The mere suggestion of renewed hostilities with the Gamma Quadrant power chilled her. With the Cardassians and the Ferengi now signatories to the Khitomer Accords, which already included the Klingons, with Starfleet sufficiently if not completely rebuilt, and with the tactical advantage of the slipstream drive, the Federation and its allies could stand against the Typhon Pact. They would pay a fortune in blood and treasure, but they would prevail. For a while, that estimation alone had allowed Bacco to sleep at night, knowing that it would keep the Pact at bay. The recent attempts at entente by the Breen and the Gorn and the Romulans had further solidified the president’s belief in the possibility of a durable peace. But the events in the Bajoran system had just razed any such hopes. And if the Typhon Pact has established an alliance with the Dominion—
“Yes, the Dominion,” Akaar said. He looked to Nechayev, who presented the argument.
“Reports of the incident at Deep Space Nine indicate that two vessels exited the wormhole: a Breen cargo vessel and a Romulan warbird. As a part of our agreement with the Typhon Pact to open our borders, we also allowed scores of their civilian ships to cross into the Gamma Quadrant. Although we prohibited them from even approaching Dominion space, and took steps to monitor their movements, we can by no means be assured that some ships did not actually visit the Dominion.
“Further,” Nechayev continued, “the Romulan warbird involved in the attack on Deep Space Nine was the Eletrix—the same vessel that was teamed with the Enterprise on the joint mission. Captain Picard reports that the Eletrix crew apparently fabricated the crash of their ship on a moon before returning surreptitiously to the Alpha Quadrant. The time between the former event and the latter would have allowed the Eletrix crew time enough to travel to Dominion space.”
Bacco felt overwhelmed. Upon learning of the incident at Deep Space 9, she had called the meeting with her highest-level advisors for the purpose of dealing with the new threat from the Typhon Pact. She found it dizzying that she suddenly found herself listening to suggestions that the Federation might face another war with the Dominion, which not that long ago had come exceedingly close to defeating the entire Alpha Quadrant.
“What do you recommend?” the president asked. She peered not at Nechayev, but at Akaar.
“All of this is conjecture,” he said. “We need more information.”
“It would make sense,” Nechayev said, “to send a ship into the Gamma Quadrant to determine if there is a Jem’Hadar force headed toward the wormhole.”
“And if there is?” Shostakova asked. “It would be difficult enough to face the Typhon Pact in a shooting war. We can’t also take on the Dominion and hope to survive.”
“No,” Nechayev said. “Which is why we’d have to collapse the entrance to the wormhole.”
“Why not just destroy the wormhole completely?” Safranski asked. “That would permanently put an end to the danger of a Dominion attack.”
“We can’t destroy the wormhole,” Bacco said. “Alien beings live there.”
Safranski nodded. Bacco wondered if he had momentarily forgotten the denizens of the wormhole, or if he hadn’t considered preserving their lives a priority. “So we don’t destroy the wormhole,” Safranski said. “We just close it. Do we even know how to do that?”
“I . . . don’t think we do,” Nechayev admitted. “But there is somebody in Starfleet who might be able to make it happen.”
“Captain Sisko?” Bacco asked. The president knew of Sisko’s status as a religious icon among the Bajoran people, thanks to his discovery of the wormhole more than a dozen years earlier. She also understood that he had been one of the few to communicate with the aliens who had created and resided within the interquadrant bridge.
“Yes,” Nechayev confirmed.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke. The president assumed that, as with her, it would take some time for everybody to deal with the prospect of a new Dominion threat. It felt harrowing to Bacco even to consider the idea.
Finally, Security Advisor Abrik said, “I agree that it’s important to think about all possibilities, to investigate the viable ones, and to plan for realistic eventualities. And we should definitely perform reconnaissance on the Dominion. But we’ve seen no evidence since the end of the war to suggest that they are plotting a renewed offensive. Both the Enterprise and the Robinson have spent time in the Gamma Quadrant recently, and although neither crew entered Dominion space, neither did they report observing anything noteworthy on routine sensor sweeps. If anything, the Founders and the society that serves them appear to have become isolationists. So if the Typhon Pact hasn’t entered into some form of alliance with the Dominion,” Abrik concluded, “we need to explore what other reasons they might have had for attacking Deep Space Nine.”
“Strictly speaking,” Akaar said, “it wasn’t an attack on the station, but a defense against it.”
“Pardon me, Admiral,” said Safranski, “but such a characterization seems absurd. The crew of Deep Space Nine didn’t violate interstellar borders, fly the station into the sovereign territory of a Typhon Pact state, and open fire on their assets.”
“When the Romulan warbird exited the wormhole,” Nechayev explained, “it was cloaked, following closely behind a Breen cargo vessel. Because of heightened security on Deep Space Nine, the Defiant crew checked for cloaked ships and discovered the warbird. It was only then that the Romulan ship fired on the Defiant, and that the Breen and Tzenkethi ships uncloaked and attacked the station. So it may be that the Pact ships planned to fight if necessary, but that they did not intend to do so if they could avoid it.”
“They could have avoided fighting by not being in the Bajoran system at all,” Safranski said. “But the Eletrix crew faked the destruction of their own starship, then apparently tried to abscond back to the Empire.”
Bacco saw Abrik’s mouth drop open, before he said, “Which would leave Captain Picard, Starfleet, and the Federation in the uncomfortable position of having to explain why only the Enterprise crew returned from their joint mission with the Romulans.”
“Propaganda,” said Akaar.
“Demonstrating that the Federation could not and should not be trusted,” Abrik said.
“But to what end?” Safranski asked. “Who could they hope to sway to their cause by such an action? As far as we know, there are no major powers giving consideration to joining the Typhon Pact.”
All at once, Bacco saw the political—and practical—goal. “What about Andor?” she said.
Beside her, Piñiero reacted with an expletive under her breath.
“The bombs planted on Deep Space Nine were covered in Andorian writing,” said Nechayev. “If they had nothing to do with that, if the Typhon Pact actually planted the bombs, but the Federation accused Andor, then that might further alienate them.”
Again, the room quieted as everybody seemed to consider what had just been said. As she thought about it, though, something did not make sense to the president. “It doesn’t add up,” she said.
“Respectfully, Madam President,” said Abrik, “it does make sense, and it’s perfectly in keeping with the complex subterfuges that the Romulans have historically perpetrated.”
“But that’s just it,” Bacco said. “You know the Romulans. We
all know the Romulans. They do nothing without excruciatingly detailed planning. They might not have wanted a battle at Deep Space Nine, but they did prepare for one by having the Breen and Tzenkethi ships there, and probably even by having somebody plant those bombs on the station. When the crew of the Romulan warbird had to fight, the fraud they perpetrated on the Enterprise crew was therefore exposed, which tells me that any propaganda value they might have gained from their ruse could not have been their primary aim.”
“No,” Akaar agreed. “Clearly the Romulans hoped to sneak the warbird through the wormhole and back to the Empire, but if they couldn’t, they were willing to fight—perhaps in an attempt to ensure that the warbird returned to the Empire.” He reached up and placed his massive hands flat atop the table. “The Romulan vessel was carrying something.”
“What?” Abrik asked.
Akaar shook his head. “I don’t know, but obviously it must have been something they acquired in the Gamma Quadrant.”
“Whatever it was,” Nechayev said, “they didn’t want us to know about it, because once they’d been defeated and were on the verge of capture, they destroyed the warbird along with themselves.”
“Not all of their vessels were lost, though,” said Akaar.
“What?” Bacco asked. “I thought you said that all three Typhon Pact starships were destroyed.”
“All three were,” Akaar said. “But the Defiant captured the small Breen cargo vessel that the Eletrix followed through the wormhole. And it carried a single living passenger: Tomalak.”
“The former proconsul?” asked Safranski.
“And the Romulan liaison to the Enterprise crew during the joint mission,” said Nechayev.
“Where is he now?” Bacco wanted to know.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 8
