It was no surprise that the Romulan situation had become her primary assignment. But perhaps in taking it on, Janeway had met the one problem that could defeat her.
“Admiral, I couldn’t help but notice that you used the past tense. ‘Were working.’ “
Janeway’s face darkened, with anger or with frustration, Riker couldn’t tell.
“We came up with a plan, Will. At the highest consular levels, working with Starfleet Intelligence, the Vulcan diplomatic corps, the psychohistorians at Memory Alpha, every resource we had available to us.”
Riker could hear the distaste in Janeway’s voice, knew she didn’t approve of the plan that had been developed, and that had evidently been given to her to implement.
“What was the plan?” Riker asked.
Janeway’s jaw clenched. “We were prepared to make a deal with the Tal Shiar.”
Riker’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“That was my reaction, too,” the admiral said.
“What…what kind of deal?”
Janeway took a long slow breath, then spoke quickly, in a rush to get the distasteful words behind her. “We were prepared to support the Tal Shiar in their reconstitution of the Romulan government. Arms, trade credits, technical personnel, whatever they needed.”
Riker felt his face redden and he took a deep breath before responding.
“Who the hell could ever think that was a good idea?”
Janeway shrugged. “You understand why it’s necessary for you to give up a chance to search for Jean-Luc, in order to save the twelve hundred Federation citizens on Latium. How is that different from making an offer to the monsters of the Tal Shiar in exchange for sparing the citizens of the Romulan Empire from a devastatingly brutal war, and sparing the Alpha and Beta Quadrants from an even more destructive conflict that could lead to the collapse of galactic civilization? The Romulans aren’t the only ones who can be pragmatic, Will. And we were prepared to do things even more reprehensible when it seemed we were losing the Dominion War.”
Riker shook his head, ashamed he could be even the smallest part of this outrageous plan that held in contempt every ideal on which the Federation had been founded, and which Starfleet served. “Admiral, tell me there’s more to it than that.”
“Oh, there is. If it makes you feel better—and truly, this was the only reason I accepted the plan and didn’t resign my commission—our offer to the Tal Shiar was never intended to be more than a way to buy time. If the Tal Shiar didn’t feel threatened, then we estimated we could have upward of a decade to rebuild our fleet, design and test thalaron defenses, learn new ways to defeat their cloaks. At the same time, a formal connection between the Federation and the Tal Shiar offered many opportunities for infiltration and intelligence gathering.”
“On both sides,” Riker said, reluctantly beginning to see the logic in what Starfleet had planned.
“It was a risk, but one we felt was preferable to the risk of galactic war.”
Then Riker saw the contradiction in the plan. “Admiral, a few minutes ago, you pointed out how impossible it would be for me to know which Romulan admirals might be aligned with the Tal Shiar. So how were you planning on making this offer of cooperation? How were you going to make contact with them?”
Janeway closed her eyes as if making a silent prayer for forgiveness. “That was Jean-Luc’s assignment,” she said. “His third mission.”
Riker felt as if he had been stunned by a phaser. For Captain Picard to agree to make such an offer to an unspeakable enemy, the danger to the Federation, to both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, had to be even worse than Riker could imagine.
“How?” Riker asked quietly, overwhelmed by what Janeway had revealed. “Who was he supposed to contact? How would he know?”
“Picard was to follow and support Kirk’s investigation into Ambassador Spock’s murder. And once the murderers had been identified—”
“No,” Riker said, truly shocked. “He wasn’t going to bring those murderers to justice, was he?”
“All our intelligence points to Spock’s having been assassinated by the Tal Shiar. Once Kirk had made the identification of those responsible, Picard was to take Kirk out of the picture, then contact the murderers with the Federation’s offer of support.”
Riker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And the Captain went along with this? Betraying his friend? Dealing with murderers?”
“One of the Vulcans who helped develop this plan, a Doctor T’Vrel, explained that the Vulcans have a principle they follow in matters like this, where no humane solution is logically possible. ” ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one.’ “
Janeway wiped at her eyes, banishing sleep or tears, Riker didn’t want to know.
“We all wish there had been another way, Will. But with billions of lives at stake, how can one life…or seven lives…be held in the balance?”
Riker had no answer, couldn’t speak.
“In the end,” Janeway continued, “for all we were willing to compromise our principles, for all we were willing to sacrifice to ensure our survival…it turns out it doesn’t matter.
“Jean-Luc’s mission failed. The Tal Shiar will plunge the Romulan Empire into civil war. And for the next ten years, we will be fighting for each day of our existence, thinking back with nostalgia to when the only thing we had to worry about was the Dominion.”
“It might be grasping at straws,” Riker said with difficulty, “but until that civil war starts, I think I’ll keep hoping for a miracle.”
Janeway offered Riker a hollow smile. “I have great experience with that particular tactic. And you know, sometimes it works.” On the screen, she reached to the side of her own desk. “Welcome to command, Will. The view isn’t pretty, is it?”
“Not today,” Riker agreed. “Thank you for your candor, Admiral.”
Janeway nodded once, and the subspace connection ended, her face replaced by the symbol of the Federation. Riker tapped the switch on his desk to shut it off. He didn’t want to see it.
He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, trying to process all that Janeway had told him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Troi said from the corner of the ready room where she had sat in silence through the whole exchange. Technically, her presence was a breach of regulations. But Starfleet recognized that some of their personnel would inevitably enter into romantic commitments with telepaths, and thus the Class Four exception existed. Had Troi not listened in to the conversation between Janeway and her husband, she would still end up knowing its contents as well as Riker did. Her presence was simply a more efficient way of managing the Titan’s resources, and Riker would be willing to argue that before a disciplinary hearing at any time.
“You’re not supposed to know what I’m thinking,” Riker said, and just the act of speaking to the woman he loved brought a measure of peace to him, despite what he had just learned. “You’re only half-Betazoid.”
Troi stepped behind his chair, rubbed at his stiff shoulders. “But I’m all yours.”
Riker sighed as her fingers dug into complaining muscles. “Do you know what I’m thinking now?” he asked with an effort at playfulness he didn’t feel.
She leaned down, kissed his ear. “Yes, but there’s no time, because of what you were thinking before.”
“And that is…?”
“I heard how you parsed the admiral’s orders.”
Riker reached up to hold Troi’s hand, anticipating what she was about to tell him, amazed anew that she knew him so well.
His wife’s voice continued, full of unshed tears and love. She knew what her husband had to do and she wanted him to know she accepted it.
“Technically, she told you that the Titan has to remain at Latium. She said nothing about what you have to do.”
16
PROCESSING SEGMENT 3, STARDATE 57486.9
“Give me your cane,” Kirk said.
McCoy stare
d at him. “So you can leave me here in the corridor?”
“I will if you don’t give me your cane.” Kirk held out his hand, and McCoy slapped the curved handle into his grip. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now what?”
Kirk stared at the blank wall of the shadowed corridor, the fourth such passage they had encountered since leaving the infirmary and the body of the Reman doctor. All the corridors had been linked to each other by empty rooms, most of them small and dark like the antechamber of Virron’s brightly lit meeting room. The last chamber that he and McCoy passed through, however, had been some type of storage area, and they had helped themselves to a couple of Reman dark-leather cloaks. Now their civilian clothes were less evident and their alien features were hidden within hoods.
“Do these corridors make sense to you?” Kirk asked.
“Nothing on this planet does,” McCoy answered.
“But the corridors, Bones. There should be a pattern to their layout.”
“They all look alike,” McCoy said. He tugged back his hood to look up and down the corridor. “All of them. The same curve. No signs. One useless light every ten meters. Always one door at one end and a second door at the other. It’s…it’s…”
“Go ahead, say it.”
McCoy sighed. “It’s illogical.”
“Exactly. And it can’t be. This is a mining operation. These corridors have to handle thousands of people moving back and forth. Which means there’s something here we’re not seeing.”
“In this light, I guarantee there’s plenty we’re not seeing.”
Kirk waved off McCoy’s complaints. “So let’s try this,” he said. He swung the green-metal cane over his head and smashed it against the corridor wall as hard as he could.
Kirk’s entire arm vibrated with the force of the strike.
Startled, McCoy jumped, looked up and down the corridor again as if hordes of Reman security guards were going to charge them any second. “What’re you doing?!”
Kirk regarded the cane with surprise. Its rigidity was unusual. He ran his hand over the wall, felt the indentation where the cane had struck. “Prospecting,” he said.
He moved a meter along the wall, swung again. This time, now that he knew what to look for, he could see the faint shadow of the new indentation.
Kirk kept moving along the wall, McCoy shuffling beside him.
“How long before you think someone’s going to come and investigate the racket you’re making?”
Kirk hefted the cane in his hand, determined to ignore the tingling in his elbow. “Listen to how quiet this corridor is. It has to be soundproofed. Probably with antinoise. No one’s going to hear this.” He struck again, looked at the wall. “Now we’re getting someplace,” he said.
“Mind telling me where?”
“Look at the wall, Bones. See where I hit it?”
McCoy peered up in the general area of the strike, shook his head. “No.”
Kirk ran his hand over the unmarked wall, smiled as he felt the indentation and saw the tips of his fingers appear to melt into the wall’s surface. “Holographic screen.”
McCoy actually smiled. “You’re kidding.”
Kirk reached under his cloak and into his jacket for an ultrasonic scalpel. “Are you amazed because there’s a holographic screen, or because I’m right?”
McCoy held out his own scalpel, thumbed it on. “I’ll reserve judgment for now.” He began to run his hand along the wall beneath the area Kirk searched.
Then Kirk felt what he knew had to be there—the vertical indentation of a doorway. “Doctor, if you please…”
McCoy found and traced the indentation, then with superb skill, slipped his ultrasonic scalpel along it.
Kirk marveled at the sight of the scalpel appearing to move through a solid wall. There was a familiar metallic pop, and a puff of smoke suddenly bulged from the smooth wall. A moment later, the wall shimmered and two sliding door panels were clearly revealed.
“Well, I’ll be.” McCoy was positively grinning now.
Kirk handed him back his cane. “And to think you doubted me.” Kirk began to push, and the door panels slid open, more easily than the ones connecting each corridor to its linking rooms.
On the other side of the concealed door was another narrow passageway, lined along one side with pipes of various sizes but identical gray-green color.
For a moment, Kirk wondered if they had only escaped to another frustrating loop of corridors. But then he heard something new. Noise.
“You hear that?” Kirk asked.
McCoy listened intently, pointed to the left. “Machinery? Coming from that direction.”
“Very good,” Kirk said, starting forward, anxious to move on.
“And that’s because…?” McCoy asked, awkwardly keeping pace with his cane.
“Remans live in darkness, Bones. They rely on sound. Their ears are sensitive, so the corridors they use are soundproofed. But this passageway isn’t. So chances are we’re in an area restricted to Romulan Assessors.”
McCoy understood what Kirk had concluded. He began to shuffle forward faster. “So if we’re headed toward machinery which only Assessors have access to, there might be a control room.”
“A control room with communications…maybe even a transporter.”
“On a slave planet?” McCoy asked. “You honestly think they’d allow a transporter down here?”
“There has to be one,” Kirk said with conviction. “Someone used a transporter to save my boy.”
McCoy fell silent and concentrated on his walking, asking no more questions.
After another two hundred meters, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had. The groans and shrieks of heavy machinery made the passageway so noisy conversation was impossible. And the din was increasing the farther they walked on.
After four hundred meters, McCoy was holding his cane under his arm so he could limp on with both hands pressed tightly over his ears. Kirk shielded his as well.
After six hundred meters, the passageway ended.
But what lay beyond seemed endless.
Ahead of them was a large viewport looking into an enormous black-rock crater.
By Kirk’s first estimation, the crater was at least two kilometers across, with sides perhaps five hundred meters high. Above its rim, there was a tenuous glow that held a scattering of pale stars. Perpetual dusk, Kirk thought. The boundary between perpetual day and perpetual night. The crater was located on the permanent terminator of Remus.
But the crater’s location was less important to Kirk than what was in it. No more than fifty meters below the viewport, on the crater’s smoothly excavated rock floor, Kirk saw spacecraft. At least five different classes, from enormous robotic ore haulers constructed from spiderweb lattices of open scaffolding, to sleek, eight-passenger atmospheric shuttles. Some of the craft were illuminated with running lights; others were dark. Some were connected to umbilicals and attended by workers in environmental suits, and others were isolated with no one near.
“A spaceport,” McCoy exclaimed.
“More like a cargo station,” Kirk amended. But terminology didn’t matter. He was a starship captain. He knew without doubt that he could tame any of the spacecraft on the crater floor. And once he had a spacecraft to command, he could do anything.
“We have to get down there,” Kirk said.
“Here’s a better plan,” McCoy suggested. “We have to get down there without being seen.”
Kirk held out his hand. “Give me your cane,” he said once more. It was time to go hunting for pressure suits.
It was too easy, and Kirk knew it. He didn’t even need McCoy to say it, but McCoy said it anyway.
“They have to know we’re here, Jim. It’s a setup, and I don’t need logic to tell me that.”
Kirk double-checked the power connections on the Romulan environmental suit he wore, then looked at the rack of helmets on the wall. The suit itself, along with its life-support pod
, was bright yellow, scuffed here and there, stained with streaks of black and brown dust. The helmets were the same color, with visors that were little more than narrow slits instead of the full-face visors Kirk was used to. Again, there was nothing in the way of insignia or even safety and maintenance labels on any part of the equipment, except for the front of the helmets. Where a full visor would normally be, each helmet carried in green the symbol of the Romulan Star Empire—the raptor in flight grasping two worlds in its claws.
“So, what, you’re ignoring me now?” McCoy asked.
“No,” Kirk said as he took a helmet from the shelf, eyed the pressure ring to see if it was a match for his suit. “I agree with you. Except for the workers out in the crater, we haven’t seen anyone since we left the infirmary. That’s impossible.”
McCoy stood up in his own suit, needing only a helmet and gloves. “So what are they up to?”
Kirk had thought about nothing else since he and McCoy had stepped into the bright equipment room and found forty-five pressure suits hanging on the wall, much too conveniently. There wasn’t one empty suit stall.
“I can think of two reasons,” Kirk said.
“Enlighten me.”
“This is some kind of Romulan game. They’re toying with us. Either the suits are faulty, or they’re going to beam us back to the infirmary or a prison cell as soon as we step into the airlock.” Kirk selected another helmet from the shelf, handed it to McCoy.
“Or…?”
“They want us to go, Bones.”
McCoy snapped his helmet into place, turned it to seal it, and when he spoke, it sounded as if he were shouting up from a well. “Why would they want that?”
Kirk found it harder to voice the words than to think them. “Because it means I’m abandoning Joseph.”
Kirk pulled on his helmet sideways, felt it click into place, then rotated it to snap the seal. Through the high narrow visor—which was even more difficult to see through than he’d anticipated—he saw McCoy standing directly in front of him. The doctor leaned forward so their helmets touched and they could speak without shouting. “You’re not abandoning him,” McCoy said, his voice muffled but louder than before. “Your boy knows you’d never do that.”
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