by David Mack
“This might be a good time to point out something else,” Choudhury cut in. “Our subject never once resorted to anything like lethal force during his escape. Most of the personnel he neutralized were incapacitated by stun shots, minimal-impact strikes on pressure points, and, in a few cases, by use of Vulcan nerve-pinch techniques. Whatever else we might say about this subject, he acts with great precision and minimal violence.”
Picard was willing to take good news where he found it. “Let’s count ourselves lucky for that—and hope our good fortune holds.” He stood and looked at Worf. “In the meantime, continue the search and update me on any developments.” To the group he added, “Dismissed.”
• • •
Worf, La Forge, and Choudhury huddled around a windowside table in the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the Enterprise’s crew lounge. Named by the ship’s former first officer, William T. Riker, before he left to captain the U.S.S. Titan, the sprawling compartment at the front of the saucer section had been decorated by its civilian barkeep, Jordan, in a motif of classic aviation memorabilia from the middle of Earth’s twentieth century. In addition to photos of Pancho Barnes, the founder of the club’s Terran namesake, the accoutrements included such touches as a horseshoe, replicas of the commissioning plaques from several starships named Enterprise, a d’k tahg donated by Captain Picard, and several other pieces of assorted bric-a-brac.
Naturally, there was a story behind each item, and Jordan knew them all—as Worf had learned to his annoyance when he’d made the error of asking about the facsimile of the original Riding Club’s liquor license, which was posted prominently behind the bar. This night, however, was not a time for reminiscence; there was work to be done.
“We need a plan of action,” the Klingon said, careful to keep his voice down so their conversation could remain private despite the setting. “I doubt the thieves are sitting idly.”
La Forge suppressed a glimmer of amusement. “Actually, I suspect that’s exactly what they’re doing, Worf. It’s not as if there’s much else they can do.”
“Geordi’s right,” Choudhury said. “Until we lift the ban on incoming and outgoing flights, they really don’t have any way off this rock.” She raised her hand and caught the attention of a passing server. “An iced chai, a prune juice, and . . .” She pointed at La Forge.
The chief engineer said to the waiter, “French roast, black.” As soon as the young man hurried away to fill the drink order, La Forge leaned back into the conversation. Fatigue seemed to be taking hold of him. “The ban on traffic helps, but not much. A planet’s still a really big thing to search—especially when you don’t know exactly who you’re looking for, or when the one target you know of can fool sensors into thinking he’s something he’s not.”
“Let’s think about what we know versus what we don’t know.” Choudhury lifted one finger at a time as she counted off items. “One: Three intruders broke into the Starfleet Annex and facilitated the theft of six Soong-type androids, one functional, five not. Two: Even though they did everything right, someone sounded the Annex’s general alarm, botching their exit strategy. Three: We have no idea who sounded that alarm—but within hours of the heist, we spot an unknown Soong-type android in the planet’s capital city. Four: We have no idea if the android was a conspirator in the heist or the good Samaritan who tipped us off, but either way he had no intention of being taken into custody, which suggests that his interests and ours aren’t the same.”
Worf’s patience waned. “This is not helping. We must find out who we were chasing, so we can learn what he wants. Only then will we know his part in this.”
The waiter returned and set down their drinks: iced chai for Choudhury, prune juice for Worf, and La Forge’s piping-hot black coffee. He stepped away without fuss or comment, leaving the senior officers to continue their low-key but palpably intense conversation.
La Forge sipped his coffee, winced at the temperature, then smiled at the flavor. After a second sip, he set down the mug. “Maybe it’s time to roll the dice on this one.”
The security chief sounded mildly suspicious. “Meaning . . . ?”
“We could spend months or more trying to search every square meter of this planet for our suspect or those missing androids, but I think that’ll be a waste of time.”
After palming a residue of prune juice from his lower lip, Worf said, “Explain.”
“The only reason that Soong android tripped our sensors is that he resembles Soong himself, like most of the doctor’s androids. But there’s no reason he has to keep that face. He could remake himself into almost any humanoid of similar size he wanted, and probably spoof the life signs to match. If we keep the pressure on, he’s almost certain to change his appearance, and then we’ll have no idea who we’re looking for.” He made his next point to Choudhury. “Do me a favor, Jas. Imagine you’re one of the three thieves. You’re in hiding with the stolen androids, watching us dragnet the planet, wondering when our search will find you. If we start to get close, and you don’t see a way off the planet with the androids, what do you do?”
Choudhury’s angular features registered her understanding of the ugly truth. “I’d cut my losses and melt down the androids—then lay low until it was safe to leave the planet.”
The engineer nodded. “Precisely. If we don’t ease up on this search, we might be condemning B-4 to death—and Doctor Soong’s legacy to oblivion.”
Worf clenched his prune juice and reminded himself not to crush the glass in his fist. He exhaled and calmed himself, then looked at La Forge. “What options do we have?”
“We let them go.” La Forge lifted a hand to forestall Worf’s and Choudhury’s protests. “But not until we take a few steps to turn that to our advantage.”
The security chief cracked a sly smile. “This ought to be good.”
La Forge felt his mood improve as he spelled out his idea. “I’ve been thinking about the cloaked-ship theory we ruled out a few hours ago. It occurs to me that even though a cloaked ship couldn’t have breached the atmosphere without causing a ruckus, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one somewhere in this system, acting as a support ship for the operation.”
Choudhury’s smile widened. “Waiting to recover the heist team, or at least take possession of the androids.” La Forge’s nod of confirmation set off a chain reaction of thoughts inside the slim, athletic woman’s head; Worf knew that distracted gaze well. “If the thieves are of Breen or Romulan origin, as we thought, they might be able to move freely on the surface without drawing attention, but they still would have needed a cloaked ship to get them into Federation space undetected. And since their target is bulky, easily identifiable, and highly valuable, they’d probably want to use a cloaked ship to smuggle it out.”
“A reasonable theory,” Worf said. “If it is correct, our next step is to identify where in this system a cloaked vessel might hide while awaiting its rendezvous. Then we lift the ban, withdraw to an ambush position, initiate surveillance of those coordinates . . . and wait.”
The chief engineer picked up his padd, tapped in a few commands, then handed it to Worf. “We have a full complement of Class V recon probes. I could upgrade them with sensor countermeasures in less than an hour. Launch ten or twelve of those at low impulse, and we could have eyes on every blind spot in the system by 2100.”
“Then,” Choudhury added, “if a ship drops its cloak for a clandestine meeting, we’ll be able to get a clear reading on their energy signature. If we’re lucky, we might get enough data to test the new cloak-penetrating sensor protocols the R-and-D office cooked up.” She checked some information on her own padd. “I can have a list of target sites for the probes in an hour.”
Worf nodded, gratified to be taking action rather than merely waiting for something new to happen. He downed the rest of his prune juice in one decadent gulp, then stood. “I will speak to the captain and have him ask the planet’s government to cancel the alert and lift the ban.” He gave La Forg
e a fraternal slap on the shoulder. “Notify me as soon as the probes are ready.” Walking toward the Riding Club’s exit, he wore a broad smile of dark satisfaction.
The hunt continues.
• • •
Deprived of the undercurrent of low-frequency engine hum and the often barely audible white noise of the ventilation system, Picard was unusually aware of his breathing and heartbeat. He sat in his command chair, the side of his fist pressed against his mouth as if to stifle any sound that might try to escape into the hush of the bridge. The normal ambience of the Enterprise was absent, leaving only an eerie quiet broken at long, odd intervals by the soft chirp of a computer feedback tone from one of the few bridge consoles that were still active.
On his right, Worf sat with his arms crossed, his eyes unblinking and focused on the forward viewscreen, which had been subdivided into a dozen panels, each tracking the signals from one of the concealed reconnaissance probes the Enterprise crew had dispatched to various sites throughout the Galor system. The selection process had been swift but logical, targeting those locations that would be most likely to offer potent natural camouflage for a cloaked ship lurking in low-power mode—just as the Enterprise was currently doing.
The command consoles beside Picard’s and Worf’s chairs were dark, as were the helm and most of the secondary mission stations around the bridge. Only the operations and tactical consoles remained active. Glinn Dygan manned ops, collecting the data from the recon probes, enhancing it through various filters, and forwarding it to Choudhury at tactical.
Persuading Captain Maddox to return to his shambles of a lab on Galor IV had been difficult. The man clearly harbored a profound sense of obligation to B-4, whose positronic matrix, he’d explained, was rapidly failing. Only after La Forge had assured Maddox that he would do everything possible to help B-4 and return him safely to Galor IV had they been able to get the cyberneticist onto a transporter pad and beam him back to the planet. In contrast, it had taken very little effort for Picard to convince Governor Eloch to cancel the alert and let Galor IV return to “business as usual.” The only difficult part of that brief conversation had been finding a polite way to refuse the governor’s demand for an official apology.
Picard was just beginning to indulge himself with a flight of fancy, imagining all the scathing retorts with which he might have rebuffed the governor, when Choudhury looked up from her station, her eyes and voice bright with anticipation. “I think we have something.” She selected one of the recon signals and expanded it to fill half the main viewscreen. On the other half she patched in a standard interplanetary traffic control feed. “A medium-sized civilian yacht has deviated from its filed flight plan and is on a course toward one of our blind spots.”
“Identify that ship,” Picard said, leaning forward.
Glinn Dygan worked at his controls. “The S.S. Velatida, a Manta-class luxury vessel, Risan registry. Standard crew complement of six, up to twelve passengers.”
“Risan registry,” Worf said under his breath. “Convenient.”
As one of dozens of planets entirely obliterated during the Borg invasion three years earlier, Risa was now frequently listed as the port of registry for vessels with fraudulent identification, simply because it was very difficult to prove such a registration hadn’t existed before its alleged world of authentication had been vaporized.
On the viewscreen, the broad, flat yacht cruised past the hidden recon probe. “It’s slowing to one-tenth impulse,” Choudhury said. “Now they’re answering all stop.”
Dygan chimed in, “Neutrino pulse detected!”
No one needed to narrate what happened next. The wide expanse of deep space beyond the yacht rippled and then was obscured by the sudden appearance of a massive military vessel. In less than a few seconds, it went from being spectral to solid.
“That is a Breen ship,” Worf said through his teeth.
Choudhury remained cool and calm as she keyed in commands on her panel. “Logging its energy signature and running it against known vessels in the database.”
Echoing the security chief’s sanguine manner, Dygan added, “Standing by to log the interference pattern in its cloaking field.”
Everyone watched with muted fascination as a broad pair of doors opened on the underside of the Breen warship, revealing a spacious docking bay. Then, like a predator engulfing its prey, it descended and swallowed up the yacht. As soon as the luxury ship was fully inside the docking bay, the Breen ship’s ventral doors crept shut.
“It would appear that someone’s arrival was expected,” Picard noted dryly.
Worf nodded. “Indeed.”
The Breen ship began to cloak. Dygan and Choudhury worked quickly, trying to lock in the data that would, hypothetically, enable the Enterprise to track the Typhon Pact vessel even while it was cloaked. If their ploy was successful, it would represent a significant step forward in Starfleet’s ongoing arms race with the Federation’s rivals.
Several seconds after the cruiser vanished from sight, Picard grew anxious awaiting a report. “Lieutenant Choudhury. Do we have a fix on the Breen vessel?”
“Not exactly.” She continued to key in commands on her console. “We’re getting intermittent readings, enough to approximate a course, but if they make any sudden changes, or move even slightly out of optimal sensor range, we’ll lose our lock.”
Dygan turned from ops to face Picard and Worf. “I might be able to clean up our signal and improve our range and accuracy, but it will take several hours.”
“We don’t have several hours,” Picard snapped. “They’re leaving now.”
“Yes, sir,” Dygan said, duly chastised as he turned away and returned to his work.
“All systems to full,” Picard said. In a second, the bridge surged back to full operating mode, and all the familiar sounds of the ship thrummed back to life. “We need options, quickly.”
Lieutenant Šmrhová turned from the master systems display behind Picard and Worf. “Sirs, I’m reading another ship moving on what appears to be a pursuit course for the Breen cruiser.” Picard and Worf got up and joined her at the MSD. Choudhury was right behind them. Šmrhová continued. “There was a small starship hiding in the asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets, not far from the yacht’s rendezvous with the Breen.” She pointed out its transponder ID and other details on the screen. “It’s a private transport capable of high warp speeds. Flight logs show it left Galor IV a few minutes behind the yacht—and followed it.”
Worf asked, “Why didn’t we detect it earlier?”
“Because it kept its distance and used the same trick we did: it ran silent and used the natural kelbonite and fistrium content of the asteroids to mask its sensor profile. I didn’t see it until it started maneuvering clear of the field.” She traced its trajectory and extrapolated its likely course. “It appears to be tailing the Breen cruiser.” She added a cautionary note. “Of course, I can’t be certain of that, since we can’t verify the cruiser’s position or heading.”
Choudhury threw a questioning glance at her superior officers. “Is it possible the pilot of that ship has a better means of tracking the cloaked ship than we do?”
“Scan the transport,” Worf said. “Are there any life signs on board?”
Šmrhová ran the scan, then shook her head. “No life signs, sir.”
“So,” Picard said. “Either that vessel has a strangely prescient autopilot program, or it has a pilot who doesn’t register on our sensors and seems once again to know more than we do about this increasingly worrisome situation.”
From ops, Dygan added, “The Breen ship has jumped to warp.” Seconds later, he added, “The transport ship has also gone to warp, maintaining its pursuit course.”
Worf asked, “Do we have a clear sensor lock on the transport?”
The Cardassian checked, then replied, “Aye, sir.”
Picard noted Worf’s keen stare; it was decision time. He strode to the center of the bridg
e, knowing without a doubt that his first officer was at his back, both literally and figuratively. Then he stood tall and infused his voice with the rich tenor of authority.
“Helm, follow that ship.”
5
Lying in bed beside Jasminder Choudhury, Worf listened to her postcoital breathing and noticed that the rhythm of her respiration was in sync with his own. All he wanted was to clear his mind of its nonstop activity, its fixation on details both grand and mundane, but his senses drank in every detail. Hunter-green bedcovers and a silver-gray comforter lay crumpled on the deck at the foot of his bed, kicked aside an hour earlier in his and Choudhury’s initial flurry of passion. Pieces of their uniforms lay on the deck, strewn like a breadcrumb trail leading back to the door from the corridor. Lulled by the deep thrumming of the ship’s warp engines, he relaxed, drew a slow, deep breath, and savored the musky perfume of their commingled sweat, which lingered like a pleasant memory and coaxed him into letting slip a ghost of a smile.
She turned her head in his direction and poked his arm. “What are you smiling at?”
“Everything. . . . Nothing.”
Four days had passed since the Enterprise left the Galor system, following the unknown transport ship at a distance that tested the limits of the Sovereign-class starship’s sensors—an action predicated on the fateful assumption that the transport was following the cloaked Breen warship. Their course had seemed to lead toward a region of unclaimed space on the borders of both the Breen Confederacy and the Federation.
If the captain’s gamble proved correct, and the transport was dogging the Breen, then the advantage to the Enterprise would be that it had followed its target a great distance while remaining well out of sensor range. Worf could only hope that the transport’s sensors had a great enough range that it was able to tail the Breen without being detected in return.
Choudhury nudged Worf. “Stop thinking about work.”
He hated being so easily interpreted. “How did you know?”
