Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice

by James Swallow

  A chill passed through Riker; a call that came without warning in the middle of the night was never something good. “I’ll take it in here. Lieutenant, make sure I’m not interrupted for the duration.”

  “Aye, sir.” The Caitian nodded and quickly padded out of the room, leaving Riker to his privacy.

  He sank into his chair and took a breath. “Computer, recognize Riker, William T. Connect terminal.”

  “Connecting.” The blue-white UFP symbol blinked out to be replaced by a grainy image of Jean-Luc Picard, framed by the wall of his ready room. Riker’s immediate fear—that something terrible had happened aboard his former ship or to his former crew—was only slightly assuaged by the neutral expression on his old friend’s face.

  “Captain?”

  “Admiral,” Picard replied. “Sir.”

  Despite himself, Riker smiled briefly. “Huh. So that’s how it feels to hear you say that.”

  “Congratulations on the promotion, Will. I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to speak to you sooner.” Picard’s voice wavered with distortion as it came to Riker across the span of light-years. “Akaar chose well.”

  Mention of the Capellan admiral’s name brought a frown to Riker’s face and he shot a look at the padd Ssura had left behind. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “I apologize for contacting you out of the blue like this. I wasn’t sure I’d reach you. But it has been somewhat problematic arranging a relay so we could speak in real time.”

  Riker didn’t comment on that, but it sounded like a wrong note with him. While the availability of long-range direct subspace communication channels was restricted in Starfleet, an officer of Picard’s seniority should have been able to access them easily.

  His former captain seemed to intuit his line of thinking. “Communications protocols have been tightened extensively across the fleet network. A temporary security measure in the wake of the current crisis, so I’m told.” And then, very deliberately, Picard ran a finger over the brow of his left eye, and across to his ear. To anyone else, it might have seemed like a casual gesture, but for Riker it set alarm bells ringing.

  Picard was warning him that someone might be listening to their conversation.

  “I’m well aware of those . . . protocols,” he replied, giving the most subtle of nods in return. Immediately, Riker wanted to know exactly what Picard’s inference could mean, but his words caught in his throat.

  Almost from the moment he had taken this office, Riker had become aware that he was under subtle observation. He doubted Ssura was part of it; Will was always a good judge of character, and the Caitian seemed too guileless to be any more than what he said he was. But Riker had noted the occasional figure trailing him at a distance around the Starfleet campus, or out in the city. He knew the kind; Federation Security. At first, Riker had dismissed the presence of the watchers as the side effect of a heightened state of alert still in place after Bacco’s assassination. But now he was starting to wonder if there was more to it. Velk had made no secret of his feelings about Riker’s promotion; he wouldn’t put it past Ishan Anjar’s chief of staff to be keeping a watch on him.

  “How is the family?” He chose an innocuous topic to see how Picard would react.

  A flicker of subspace static crackled over the image as the captain smiled ruefully. “Rene is into everything. He’s becoming quite the challenge, and Beverly promises me it’s just the beginning.”

  Riker nodded. “She’s not wrong. Tasha’s the same. Just wait until he starts taking things to pieces for fun. That’s . . . interesting. Sometimes I wish I was married to a precognitive instead of an empath, just so I could catch my daughter before she breaks something.”

  “I’ll make sure Geordi keeps my son away from the warp core for the moment.”

  “And the rest of the crew? How are they holding up after . . . what happened?”

  Picard’s smile went away and he met his former first officer’s gaze. He didn’t need to voice how he felt, Riker could see it written in his eyes. Jean-Luc wanted to be here in the center of things, involved in bringing some kind of sense—some kind of closure—to Nanietta Bacco’s death. At that moment, Riker wanted to declare all his doubts and fears to his old friend, but he kept his silence.

  “Will, our duty . . . as much as it brings wonder and triumph, it also brings us misfortune. It’s the price we pay. But I can think of no worse a tragedy than a life of great potential cut short. Bacco was the leader we needed throughout all the trials we’ve faced these last few years.” He shook his head, his expression solemn. “She appealed to the greatest in us. And now I’m afraid those who follow her will call out to the worst.”

  “I know you considered her a friend.”

  Picard nodded again. “Indeed. And because of that, I owe her a debt.” Then the captain’s face shifted as he schooled his expression. Riker recalled that look well; it was the same one Picard had worn across a card table on those evenings he had lost a stack of poker chips to his commanding officer. “I’ve been reflecting on a lot of things over the past few days. Do you recall our mission with that Vulcan ambassador, the one we took to meet the Romulans aboard the Devoras?”

  Riker stiffened at the memory. “Don’t you mean Subcommander Selok?” Even though it was almost two decades since the incident at the Neutral Zone, he still remembered it clearly, and it smarted. Serving aboard the Enterprise-D at the time, Riker and Picard had been under orders to deliver the ambassador to a meeting with representatives of the Romulan Star Empire as part of ongoing treaty negotiations, but she had apparently perished in a transporter accident while beaming to the Romulan ship. It was only later that the Enterprise crew discovered her death had been faked. In reality, the woman was a deep-cover Romulan spy masquerading as a Vulcan, and the Enterprise had unwittingly aided in bringing her home to her people.

  He turned the memory over in his mind. Why was Jean-Luc bringing this up now? “The Romulans played us that day.”

  “Do you remember what I said after we were debriefed by Starfleet?”

  Riker recalled Picard’s words. “That as long as you were her commander, you wouldn’t allow Enterprise to be sent on any more fool’s errands.”

  Picard leaned closer to the image pickup. “I meant it then. I still mean it now.”

  Riker was only aware of the broadest strokes of the Enterprise’s current mission, sent to Ferenginar in order to show the colors and get out in front of any attempts by the Typhon Pact to entice the Ferengi Alliance into their fold. But if pressed, the admiral would have called it a makeweight assignment, and certainly not something that required the presence of Starfleet’s flagship. Picard was telling him that he felt the same way.

  His thoughts raced. At a time like this, when the people of the Federation needed to see the symbols of their strength and unity—symbols like Enterprise, the ship that had led the charge against so many threats over the years—it made little sense to send it far away . . . unless the choice had been deliberate.

  “Sometimes the enemy hides in plain sight, Will.” A deep, hissing buzz of interference made the words turn harsh and metallic.

  “We’re going to find those responsible for the assassination,” Riker went on, pitching his words carefully. “You can count on that. The Tzenkethi won’t get away with this.” He made the last statement without weight, deliberately positioning it to gauge Picard’s reaction.

  The response he got was not what he expected. Across the interstellar distance, he saw his former captain’s eyes widen, the poker face slipping for a brief instant. Anyone who didn’t know Jean-Luc Picard as well as Will Riker did might never have recognized the moment for what it was: shock and alarm.

  Suddenly the careful artifice in the captain’s manner dissolved, and that was the most troubling thing of all. Picard dropped the mask he had been wearing for the benefit of any interloper listening in on their conversation and fixed Riker with a serious, unblinking stare. “The Tzenkethi are not r
esponsible for this,” he insisted with a certainty that was unshakable. “A Cardassian—”

  An abrupt blizzard of static tore across the viewscreen, rendering Picard’s words barely intelligible. Spatial distortion artifacts broke the image of the other man into jagged fragments, pixels shifting like particles of sand blown by the wind.

  Riker leaned in. “Jean-Luc? Can you hear me?” He raised his voice instinctively, as if that would help it carry across the void. “Captain, do you read?”

  “It was not—” Picard’s words echoed and became indistinct. “ —True Way. Will, I say again—”

  The broken image snapped off to be replaced by an error message: TRANSMISSION LOST.

  Riker threw up his hands in frustration, and he turned as the office door hissed open. Lieutenant Ssura entered at a pace, his eyes narrowed. “Admiral, is there a problem? I heard you call out. . . .” He halted as he saw the blinking legend on the screen.

  “The signal was disrupted,” Riker told him, his irritation flaring. “At a very inopportune moment.”

  Ssura went to the console and brought up a diagnostic display. “Checking . . .” He made a negative noise deep in his throat. “Sir, according to the communications routing software, the real-time transmission from the Enterprise was cut off by a surge in subspace interference.” The Caitian looked up and blinked. “It could be the wake of an ionic storm somewhere along the line of the signal path, or perhaps another localized spatial effect.”

  Riker folded his arms, scowling. “Just unlucky timing, I guess?” His caustic tone was apparently lost on the junior officer.

  “Quite so, Admiral. I would hazard a guess that the probability of such an interruption would be extremely low.” Ssura hesitated, his lips drawing back from his teeth in an expression that showed distaste. “Is there any reason to suspect deliberate hindrance, sir?”

  “If there was,” Riker allowed, “how could it be done?” According to Ssura’s personnel record, the lieutenant had minored in communication operations at the Academy. If he was working for an agenda out of step with Riker’s, then whatever the aide said next would make that clear.

  “It is possible to simulate subspace interference if certain parameters are met,” Ssura answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Another vessel near the transmission source or one of the relay vessels could affect the signal in this way.”

  “But it could be disrupted locally? By which I mean here, at Starfleet?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ssura’s head bobbed again. “It could. But what reason would there be for that?” It was the response Riker was looking for, confirming his own suspicions and suggesting that Ssura was being honest with him.

  He turned away, looking back at the silent monitor screen, leaving Ssura’s question hanging. A dozen new doubts, each one more troubling than the last, churned in his thoughts. The fatigue that had been lurking at the edges of his awareness now crowded in on him. Riker felt heavy and leaden, weighed down by his uncertainty.

  “Shall I attempt to reacquire a connection with the Enterprise?” asked the lieutenant, watching him intently.

  “Do what you can,” Riker told him, even as he knew that Ssura would not be successful. “But in the meantime, I have another job for you.”

  The lieutenant listened intently to what the admiral wanted from him, and slowly the Caitian’s pointed ears folded back across his scalp with silent unease.

  * * *

  Tuvok turned his head slowly from right to left, allowing the display panels projected by the data monocular he wore to map to his visual range. Test patterns overlaid targeting sweeps and atmospheric readings relayed from sensors on the skin of the oversuit sheathing his torso and limbs. He focused his attention on Lieutenant Commander Nog, and the scanners built into the suit dutifully rendered a cursory scan of the young Ferengi officer. Combat subroutines correctly identified Nog’s species and physiological structure, providing tactical flags that indicated optimal points of attack to disarm, immobilize, or kill. It had been five days since they departed the Alpha Centauri star system, five days at high warp velocity, five days of drills and preparatory exercises like this one.

  Nog’s head was cocked, his large ears twitching slightly as he studied a tricorder in his hand. “That looks good, Commander. Calibration is almost complete.”

  Tuvok glanced around the Snipe’s cargo bay at the other figures in the room. Along with the Ferengi and the Bynar pair, the room had three other occupants, each of them wearing the same stealth gear as he did. The suit’s sensors showed them as glowing blue outlines each tagged with a simple alphanumeric code: A4 to indicate the team designation and then a secondary flag to indicate their identity as an ally. Tuvok’s hood sensors showed him which of the others was the Suliban medic Khob, which was the Elloran female Sahde, and which was Thomas Riker.

  Nog adjusted the tricorder’s sensor head. “Thermal scan shows no returns. You’re almost invisible. Switching to magnetic.”

  As Tuvok waited, he saw Tom reach up and tap his monocle. There was a flicker of holographic light and Nog flinched involuntarily as the other man’s suit switched from matte black to a camouflage effect that mimicked the color and shade of a nearby bulkhead. The combat gear was lightweight and adaptable, but it sacrificed armor for concealment. Operating at full capacity, the suit could make one virtually undetectable to most scanners, but the power cost was high and extended use would tax the batteries.

  “No detections,” Nog reported. “Test complete.”

  “Deactivating,” said Tuvok, flicking back his own monocular. He felt a faint buzz of static, and again he saw the narrowing of the Ferengi’s eyes as his suit went into standby mode. “Is there something wrong, Mister Nog?”

  The Ferengi’s nose wrinkled. “No . . . well, maybe.” He sighed, gesturing toward the suit. “These things, they just remind me a little too much of the Jem’Hadar.”

  Tuvok gave a nod. He was aware that Nog had been on the front line during the conflict with the Dominion, and he had suffered severe personal injuries during engagements with the invaders from the Gamma Quadrant. Those battles had doubtless left an indelible mark on his psyche. “The Jem’Hadar shroud is a bio-energetic ability innate to their species,” he noted. “I believe this system is based on technology from isolation suits used by Federation scientists to covertly observe pre-warp cultures.”

  “It’s still unnerving to have a person blend into the walls right in front of you.” Nog’s hand dropped to where a phaser would have been holstered if he were in Starfleet uniform. “I’ve got to fight down the reflex to go for my weapon each time it happens.”

  Sahde also had deactivated her suit and now she appeared at Tuvok’s side, her head cocked as she examined the Ferengi. “Well, we wouldn’t want to make you nervous, would we?” she asked silkily.

  Nog’s lips thinned. “I’d just suggest you don’t sneak up on me. I’m likely to react very poorly to it.”

  “A Ferengi with fangs . . . and not just teeth?” The Elloran showed her own canines in a teasing grin. “Who’d have thought it?” She chuckled and walked away.

  “I don’t think I like her,” Nog said quietly, just loud enough for Tuvok to hear. “She’s mocking me.”

  “From a certain perspective, that may seem so,” he offered. “However, if studied from an Elloran standpoint, her actions have a different intention.”

  “Such as?”

  “Sahde may be sexually attracted to you.”

  Nog went pale. “What?”

  Tuvok explained that on Ellora, it was a traditional social gambit for a female to disparage a male in order to test his reaction and gauge his worth as a potential mate. He also noted that Sahde’s scent—undetectable to Ferengi senses—showed a marked increase in pheromone release whenever she was close to Nog. The other officer seemed nonplussed by Tuvok’s suggestion. “However, I may be mistaken,” he concluded. “She may just be attempting to belittle you for her own amusement.”

 
“I’ll . . . keep that in mind. . . .”

  Khob was the last of them to reappear, and the big Suliban shrugged out of the suit, opening it to the waist. “Uncomfortable,” he rumbled as he walked away. “Don’t like the idea of sneaking around in this.”

  Nog glanced at Tuvok. “He has a point. You said those suits are based on Federation tech, but I’ve never come across them before.” He reached out and touched the arm. “It’s been optimized for battlefield operations.”

  “They may be prototypes,” said Tuvok. But he saw Nog’s line of reasoning. Starfleet was not in the business of building clandestine, first-strike weapons, but the suit on his back could very much be the tool of an assassin or an aggressor. He was aware that Starfleet had recently captured examples of shrouding suits during an enounter with the Breen’s Spetzkar special forces; could that have been the origin of this new technology?

  Logic told him that any weapon of war was, by itself, essentially without moral color or ethics—it was the use to which such weapons were put that defined the morality of those who wielded them. However, it would be difficult to justify a use of the stealth suits in a way that was not ethically gray.

  Tuvok looked down at his gloved hands. “I will admit that I am not wholly at ease with the tone of our mission orders.”

  Nog’s expression hardened. “Commander, I never signed up for Starfleet because I wanted to skulk in shadows and stab people in the back.” He gave a bitter smirk. “If I wanted that, I’d have joined the Ferengi Commerce Authority.”

  “I have taken part in covert operations before,” said the Vulcan. “I understand the need for secrecy. But I am concerned about the degree of separation and autonomy Active Four exhibits.”

  The engineer nodded again. “Look at the instructions we were given. ‘Go here. Tell no one. Delete after reading.’ I talked to Ixxen, and she said she got the same thing. I’m willing to bet that our own crews back home don’t know what we’re doing or where we’ve disappeared to.”