A slew of numbers and words marched across the internal display within Trok’s helmet, measurements and descriptions fed there by the scanner he held in one hand. He read through the data, then did so a second time. He wanted to make certain that he comprehended what the sensors told him, and that he didn’t mistakenly interpret the information merely so that he would see what he wished to see. How many facilities had he searched through on the surface of Overne III? How much time—How many days now?—had he hunted for the gear that would allow him to manufacture high-performance structural integrity field and deflector generators, and that would in turn provide him the ability to install quantum slipstream drive on existing Breen and other Typhon Pact starships?
And each day that I search, each moment, I expect a polaron beam to come slicing through the roof of whatever building I’m in and reveal my presence there, Trok thought. Or I anticipate a troop of Jem’Hadar soldiers suddenly materializing around me.
He tried to tell himself that his fears came from his vocation as an engineer. Trok knew the basic principles of the Romulans’ cloaking technology, and given the preponderance of the evidence that it had worked in practice for a very long time, he accepted its usefulness. But their phasing cloak had been a relatively recent advance, and though he’d witnessed it operating, allowing the crew of Ren Fejin to deliver him into one Overne industrial plant after another, he nevertheless felt skeptical that the Breen privateer remained undetected by all the Jem’Hadar on the many starships circling the planet, and invisible to internal security systems. And so he waited day by day, moment by moment, for some member of the Dominion—an Overne, a Vorta, a Jem’Hadar, even a Founder—to abruptly appear and take him into custody—or to abruptly appear and do something far worse.
Trok also realized that his status as an engineer—even one directing as important a project as the development of the slipstream drive—implied another fact: he was not a soldier. While he’d agreed to travel to the Gamma Quadrant to look for the apparatus he required for his work—As though I’d had a choice in the matter—he hadn’t foreseen the magnitude of the peril he would face. He absolutely wanted to succeed as an engineer and as the leader of the slipstream effort—for himself, for the Confederacy, and for the Pact—but he wanted even more to go on living.
It still chilled Trok to consider how fortunate he’d been to be away from the Alrakis system when the Federation operatives had destroyed Thot Keer’s slipstream prototype, along with the shipyard that housed it. So many Breen engineers and technicians had perished in the assault, and if not for Keer assigning him the usually unenviable task of briefing Domo Brex, Trok would have died as well. That he had survived Alrakis when so many of his colleagues had not, only made him more wary of placing himself in danger.
But as Trok for a third time read through the details collected by his scanner, he thought that he might finally have arrived on the verge of escaping the Gamma Quadrant with his life. It had taken some time, but he’d located what he’d come to the Dominion seeking. The crew of Ren Fejin needed only to take possession of it all and haul it back to Breen territory. Then he could at last leave the sleuthing behind him and return to actual engineering work.
“Trok to Ren Fejin,” he said, opening up a communications conduit to the ship.
“This is Beld,” came the shipmaster’s immediate reply. “What is it, Trok? Are you finished already? Do you need to move on to the next building?” Beld’s words seemed to register his own annoyance that the mission had continued for so long without success.
“No,” Trok said. “I mean, yes, I’m finished, but not because I have to keep searching. I found the equipment.”
A noticeable silence followed, and Trok wondered if he’d lost contact with the ship. But then Beld asked him to repeat his message. He did.
“All right,” Beld said. “Stand by.”
Trok waited. He could do little else. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he would soon board Ren Fejin again, and before long, head for home.
A noise suddenly rose within the building, a hum reminiscent of the whine of a transporter. It sounded thin in the huge space, insufficient to fill the area from wall to wall and floor to rooftop. Trok recognized the noise, but with the thought of Jem’Hadar soldiers still fresh in his consciousness, he took a step backward. Then, at one end of the building, in a sizable open area likely given over during production to large-scale starship systems testing, bright pinpoints penetrated the darkness, reducing it to a mere gloom. Then the form of Ren Fejin began to take shape, the hull becoming substantial beneath the vessel’s running lights.
At the back of the dorsal that connected the two main structures of the ship, a hatch rotated inward. A Breen—no doubt Beld—emerged from within and swung onto a line of hand- and footholds punched into the hull of Ren Fejin. As he began to descend, Trok headed over to the base of the built-in ladder. The metallic ring of Beld’s boots against the hull contrasted with the scuff of Trok’s footsteps on the concrete.
When Beld reached the floor, he said simply, “Show me.”
Trok handed him the scanner. The shipmaster worked the controls of the device, obviously routing its readings to the display within his own helmet. Then he passed it back to Trok, who adjusted it to highlight the great machines that they would have to beam onto the ship and haul back to the Alpha Quadrant.
“All of these?” Beld asked.
“Four sets of equipment, yes,” Trok said. “One set that produces a ship’s deflector generator and the associated infrastructure, another for structural integrity, and the other two to perform full-scale testing on each.”
“These machines are massive,” Beld said.
“They have to be,” Trok told him. “They produce those systems as holistic components for a starship. That’s their strength. Vulnerability is minimized because there’s no in-system integration required, and thus no possibility of connectivity weaknesses.”
“Can the machines themselves be disassembled?” Beld asked.
“I’m sure that they can be,” Trok said, “but you see how complex they are. It would require a thorough research project to figure out how to do so.”
Beld did not respond right away, and silence once more descended within the building. Trok felt pressure to fill the gap in the conversation, and to ameliorate the problem he inferred from Beld’s questions and comments. “If necessary, we can leave the testing equipment behind. It might take some time, but we should be able to create a means ourselves of analyzing systems performance.”
Beld still hesitated. At length, he reached for Trok’s scanner again, which the engineer once more handed to him. Beld held up the device in the direction of the ship, worked at its controls, then returned it. Trok took the scanner and routed the feed of the shipmaster’s readings to the display in his own helmet. He saw a representation of Ren Fejin, along with a series of dimensions and volumes. “What am I looking at?” he asked.
“The size of our cargo holds,” Beld said. “Even if we leave the testing equipment behind, and even if we dismantle the production equipment, it’s still too much. It’s possible we might be able to fit one of the production machines on the ship, but not both.”
Trok’s satisfaction at having found what he needed for the slipstream project melted away like ice on a summer afternoon. “We have to bring all the manufacturing gear,” Trok said. “That’s the entire reason for us being here. It’s not as though we can take one set of equipment, then come back later for the other one.”
“No,” Beld said. “But that’s why we have a contingency plan.”
Trok had heard of no such plan. But then, he reminded himself, I’m just an engineer. “What’s the plan?” he asked.
In response, the shipmaster turned and started climbing back up the hull to the open hatch. Trok quickly switched off his scanner and tucked it into a compartment in his environmental suit. Then he followed Beld back into the ship.
Moments later, Trok stood
on the bridge of the cloaked Ren Fejin as it soared upward through the atmosphere of Overne III.
“Encode the message,” Beld ordered.
Trok, as he had so often during the long journey within the Gamma Quadrant, stayed off to the side and out of the way in the small confines of Ren Fejin’s bridge. The Romulan specialist waited beside him. Trok watched and listened to the shipmaster, who stood next to the navigational display. The holographic images of the starship-manufacturing installations on the surface of Overne III had given way, first to the squadron of Jem’Hadar vessels orbiting high above the planet, and then to open space. The ship remained within the Overne system, but outside the plane of the ecliptic.
“Append all data, including the readings of all the equipment Trok requires and its location, so that they can pinpoint it easily,” Beld continued. “We don’t need to remain in Dominion territory any longer than absolutely necessary, and certainly not just to tell them what to look for and where to look.”
Trok concurred completely with Beld’s last sentiment. Although the engineer would have preferred to have chaperoned the equipment back to the Confederacy aboard Ren Fejin, it also satisfied him to know that it would at least follow him home, and that he no longer had to prowl through the industrial plants of Overne III. Liberated from his task as a thief, he turned his mind to what lay ahead: a slipstream fleet for the Breen Confederacy and the Typhon Pact.
“Your message has been encrypted,” said Zelk.
“Kinn?” Beld said, turning toward the Romulan. “Will you affix your verification?”
Kinn had studied the readings Trok had taken of the equipment, and he’d voiced his agreement with Beld that they should implement their contingency plan at once. At the shipmaster’s request, he crossed the bridge, jockeying around the navigational hologram, until he stood beside Zelk. The Breen officer touched a control, then nodded to the Romulan. “This is Engineering Specialist Joralis Kinn,” he said. “I request assistance. Authorization code: eleth risu t’ren evek norvad.” Kinn nodded back at Zelk, who then worked at his console once more.
“Your message has been sent, Master,” said Zelk.
“Very good,” Beld said. “Dree, plot the shortest possible course to take us out of Dominion space. From there, head us back to the Idran system. As soon as we receive a reply, I want to make the best possible speed to the wormhole.”
“Plotting your course,” Dree said, operating his navigational console.
“We’re not leaving yet?” Trok asked, surprised.
Beld peered over at him. “We don’t know the location of the vessel we just tried to contact,” he said. “We can’t even be sure that it’s in the Gamma Quadrant at all. We only have an idea of approximately where it’s supposed to be, and when. And so, no, we’re not leaving yet—not until we receive the coded signal indicating that the other ship is on its way.”
“But what if we don’t receive such a response?” Trok asked, displeased with the apparent uncertainty in Beld’s contingency plan.
“Then we resort to the tertiary plan,” Beld said.
“Which is what?”
“Which is none of your concern unless we get to that point,” Beld said, clearly having no patience for Trok’s questions. “Your concern right now is to figure out how you’re going to adapt the equipment we’re working so hard to acquire for you into Breen starships with slipstream drive.”
“Into Typhon Pact starships,” Kinn said quietly.
“Of course,” Beld said. “Forgive me for misspeaking.”
Kinn bowed his head in obvious acceptance of Beld’s apology. “If you have no further need for me at the moment, then, I’d like to repair to my quarters.” When the shipmaster did not object, Kinn strode to the bridge’s only door, waited for a moment as the single panel glided slowly open, then exited into the corridor.
Trok thought to go to his own tiny cabin, but he didn’t want to feel that he’d been chased from the bridge. Instead, he withdrew his scanner from its place in his environmental suit and reviewed the data he’d collected on the Overne machinery. He would do as Beld had suggested, and begin determining how best to use—
Ren Fejin jolted as a roar filled the bridge. Trok flew from his feet, his scanner hurtling out of his hand as he landed hard on the deck. The back of his helmet struck a bulkhead with a loud crack. He felt dazed, but he reached up to the nearest console, found a place to grip, and started to pull himself up. But then the ship shook fiercely again, and he crashed back down to the decking.
“They’re polaron bursts,” he heard one of the Breen officers call out in a rush of electronic static. “Shields are down sixty-four percent. I don’t think we’re cloaked anymo—”
A sound like thunder blasted through the ship, and the bridge shuddered and then canted, the inertial dampers failing for a moment. Trok rolled across the deck and into something solid. Even with the protection of his environmental suit, he felt battered. He tried to focus and look around the bridge. He spotted a scanner, presumably his own, smashed to pieces. He saw one Breen officer down, but another still on his feet.
“Shields down eighty-one percent,” somebody called out, though Trok could not tell who.
“Evasive maneuvers,” said somebody else, probably Beld. “See if you can cloak us again.”
Trok thought he heard the tap of gloved fingers on a control panel, but then another weapons strike landed. He listened to see if he could hear the ship’s hull coming apart. What would that sound like? he wondered idly.
As Trok waited to die, he spared another thought for all of his colleagues who had lost their lives in the Alrakis system. Somehow, it still pleased him that he had survived when they had not.
Then he lost consciousness, expecting never to wake up again.
25
“Captain, we’re receiving a message from the Eletrix,” reported Lieutenant Choudhury from the tactical console. In the command chair, Picard heard the urgency in the security chief’s voice even before she continued. “It’s a distress signal.”
Picard responded calmly, out of long experience. After decades as a Starfleet captain, he delivered his next words almost automatically. “Put it on-screen.”
The tactical station emitted several reactive chirps beneath Choudhury’s touch. “Sir,” she said, a sense of uncertainty entering her tone, “the message is audio only.”
“Let’s hear it, then, Lieutenant,” Picard said.
“Aye, sir.”
Picard glanced over to see Choudhury operating her controls. She worked deftly, but the captain could see the tension in her face. An instant later, the recognizable voice of the Romulan commander spilled onto the bridge.
“Eletrix to Enterprise. This is T’Jul.” The message crackled with static. “We’ve suffered an accident, possibly an …” The signal dropped out for a few seconds, and when it returned, some of what the commander said had clearly been lost. “… tage. We are facing … tainment, and may … ject the singul …”
In his mind, Picard filled in T’Jul’s missing words and syllables: An act of sabotage. A loss of containment. May have to eject the singularity. The captain knew that an artificial, microscopic black hole drove the engines of every Imperial Fleet starship, and that a complex system of containment held the quantum singularity safely in check, keeping it from consuming the vessel it powered.
“… may need to evac … quest immediate assist …”
The message quieted again. Picard visualized a loss of data on a display of text, leaving letters missing and holes in words. He waited for the message to resume, but it didn’t.
After a few more seconds, Choudhury said, “That’s all there is, Captain. I’ll attempt to clean it up, see if I can capture some of the missing content.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.” A mix of thoughts and emotions vied for supremacy within Picard. He first felt concern for the crew of Eletrix, and an earnest desire to help them. But he also thought of the joint mission and what its fa
ilure would mean to the Federation, to the Khitomer Accords, and beyond. And after what Commander Worf had discovered on the carbon planet, Picard could not ignore the seed of distrust that had been planted within him.
“Do you have a fix on the location of the Eletrix?” asked Worf, seated at Picard’s right hand.
Choudhury continued to work her console. “Spatial coordinates were appended to the message, but they’re incomplete because of the signal loss,” she said. “I’m tracking back along their transmission path now.”
With Choudhury occupied, Picard called on the ship’s senior science officer to answer his next question. “Lieutenant Elfiki, is there anything of note on long-range sensors?”
From her position along the starboard arc of the bridge, Elfiki said, “No, sir, nothing out of the ordinary.”
That judgment provided Picard with at least a measure of relief. The aftereffects of an explosion resulting from the loss of containment about the singularity driving Eletrix would be readily detectable via subspace readings. Even the loosing of the microscopic black hole from within its cage, short of causing an explosion, would have registered on long-range scans.
“Captain,” Choudhury said, “the message from the Eletrix originated in or near a star system approximately half a light-year distant.”
“Lieutenant, transfer the coordinates to the conn,” Picard said. “Lieutenant Faur, set a direct course.”
At the conn, Joanna Faur’s hands raced across her panel. “Calculating the course now, Captain,” she said. “Estimated travel time would be one-point-two hours at maximum warp.”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night Page 33
