It occurred to T’Jul to lie, to assert that the Breen had intended to bargain for the technology, but since Ren Fejin had entered Dominion space and approached Overne III under cloak, and then enlisted the aid of a cloaked Romulan warbird, such a claim would lack credibility. Instead, she chose to adhere to a version of the truth. “Yes, we were going to steal your equipment for manufacturing deflector and structural integrity shield generators. We did not think you would give them to us.”
“And that is your idea of peace?” Laas said. “To steal what is not yours just because you supposedly need it.”
“We do need it,” T’Jul said. “The lives of our people depend on our ability to match the Federation’s technological level of advancement. If we cannot, then we will eventually be overrun and enslaved, or possibly exterminated completely.”
“I don’t care,” Laas said again. “The fewer monoforms, the better.”
T’Jul waited a beat without saying anything, fighting the frustration rising within her. Cloaked or not, she did not like having Eletrix in the middle of Dominion space. She wanted to leave, to take her ship back through the Bajoran wormhole and back to the Empire as soon as possible. But she also believed in the cause that Tomalak had brought aboard with him, and which she had served previously: matching the might of the Federation. If at all possible, she would not depart the Dominion without obtaining the equipment that her people needed to achieve a balance of power and thereby preclude war.
“From aboard the Breen vessel, we contacted the Jem’Hadar stationed about Overne Three, as well as several of the Vorta there,” she said. “They know that we have you, and that’s the only thing that has prevented them from sweeping the system—from sweeping all of your territory—in an attempt to locate our cloaked ship. For now, they will allow us to return the Breen vessel’s engineers to their ship so that they can repair it and exit Dominion space. They have yet to consent to providing us with the technology we need, though. I was hoping that you might convince them.”
“Why would I help you?” Laas asked, his anger unrelenting. “You’ve taken me prisoner, restricted the essence of who I am, and now you threaten me unless I do your bidding.”
“I am not threatening you,” T’Jul said. She considered making a gesture of good faith by deactivating the quantum stasis field, but based on Laas’s obvious hostility toward “monoforms,” she doubted that she could trust him to honor any bargain they struck if she returned his ability to shape-shift. “I’m asking for your cooperation. Allow us to take the sets of machinery we need from the surface of Overne Three, and we will allow you to go free. We will leave the Dominion and return to our own space through the Bajoran wormhole.”
“And if I don’t?”
T’Jul tried to gauge the answer that would provide the best chance of convincing—or coercing—Laas to agree to the deal she’d proposed. It seemed clear that a light touch would not work with him, nor did she think that the threat of death would either. “If you do not provide us with what we need, then I am sorry to say that we will not provide you with what you need.”
“What does that mean?” Laas demanded.
“It means that we need the equipment we described,” T’Jul said, no longer working to keep her tone calm. “You need your freedom. If we don’t get what we need, then neither will you. We will bring you through the wormhole and to the Romulan Star Empire, where you will spend the rest of your days confined to a cell and unable to shape-shift.”
Laas looked at T’Jul with such hatred that she thought he might launch himself across the corner of the table to get his unchanging but potentially lethal hands around her throat. She felt her own anger rising. She understood all the reasons why the Dominion in general and Laas in particular should be upset about two cloaked alien ships entering their territory to perpetrate a theft—but she didn’t care enough to see the situation from their perspective. She had a job to do, and not one for personal gain, but one intended to help her people and their allies protect themselves against the great threat of the Federation, the Klingons, and the others. She would do what needed to be done.
Peering at one of the security guards who had ushered Laas into the conference room, she said, “Lock him up.”
34
Colonel Cenn Desca mounted the stairs to the captain’s office—though even after the years he’d spent on Deep Space 9, he found it difficult not to think of it as the prefect’s office. So much time had passed since the end of the Occupation, and yet the Cardassian presence on Bajor and the terrible legacy they’d left—the physical scars disfiguring the planet, the destroyed art and architecture that could never be recovered, the families that would never be whole again—all of it still haunted Cenn.
In his seven years aboard the station, he’d become accustomed to working and living on DS9—an aspect of himself that he despised. He wanted to cling to his hatred of the Cardassians, and to everything they had ever touched, and for a long time, he had. But time and life moved on, and whether or not he resisted their influences, they carried him along into the future. Counselor Matthias had helped him understand so much about himself, about why he felt and thought the things he did, and that had been the key to letting go of most of his negative emotions.
Most, but not all.
Memories remained of the Occupation, and Cenn refused to cheapen the importance of all that had happened, of all that had been lost, by willfully forgetting. He wanted to remember. He needed to remember. But he paid the price for doing so.
Each day on what had once been dubbed Terok Nor—and what from the outside looked almost exactly as it had when Bajorans had first been brought there as slave labor to process the raw ore ripped from their world—each day on DS9 brought Cenn self-loathing. He had yet to discuss it in his counseling sessions, or with any of the numerous friends he’d made on board, but he recognized the unhealthy and destructive impulses within him. Only recently had he realized how comfortable he’d grown on the station, and only then had he begun to castigate himself for the life he’d made in a place with such an evil past.
But I serve the interests of Bajor, Cenn told himself. When his homeworld had joined the Federation, he had chosen not to join Starfleet, but to remain in the Militia. Although he had rarely left the planet prior to his nomination as DS9’s Bajoran liaison officer, he’d accepted the position as a means of continuing to promote the welfare of his people. He’d had reservations when Captain Ro had offered him the role of exec, but he’d seen the value in holding such a position of authority even as he remained liaison officer. Vedek Kira had taken on both capacities for seven years, during which time she had done much to safeguard the people of Bajor.
Cenn reached the top of the stairs and the doors to Captain Ro’s office. Not the doors to the prefect’s office, Desca, he told himself, and he knew that he would have to speak with Counselor Matthias about the ugly thoughts in his head. He touched the chime control set into the bulkhead, and he heard Ro invite him inside. He stepped forward, and the doors separated.
Ro sat at her desk, her computer interface active, and an accumulation of padds spread out before her. “Desca,” she said when she looked up. “I hope you’re here with a phaser to put me out of my misery. Between the reports that the Federation, Starfleet, and Bajor require, I’m amazed that I can get any other work done around here.”
Cenn stepped up to Ro’s desk. Throwing a look of shame onto his face, he held up his right hand, in which he carried a padd. “I’m sorry, Captain,” he said. “The scheduled arrivals and departures for the day.”
“You mean that’s not already here?” Ro said, waving her hands over her cluttered desk.
“Maybe we could just close up the place for a week or so and all head into the holosuites,” Cenn suggested.
Ro chuckled. “That actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” she said. “Do you think Starfleet and Bajor would mind?”
“Not if you can figure out a way to stop the traffic to and from th
e Gamma Quadrant,” Cenn said.
“That,” Ro said, “sounds like an even better idea.”
Though the captain had offered her comments in a joking manner, Cenn knew that they contained kernels of truth. “The increase in the number of ships coming to the station has been hard,” he said. “But I think we’ve handled it pretty well, and nobody more so than you.”
“Thanks, Desca,” Ro said. “We do have a pretty good crew here.” She held out her hand toward him, and he gave her the padd he’d brought. “Anything else?”
Although he wanted to avoid adding another burden to the already considerable list of the captain’s responsibilities, Cenn had little choice. “Unfortunately, we seem to have a problem with the communications relay in the Gamma Quadrant,” he said.
“We’re still not receiving transmissions?” Ro said.
“No,” Cenn told her. “We’ve received no regular comm packets, and no other word, from either the Robinson or the Enterprise over the last couple of days.”
“I thought we ran a test yesterday,” Ro said.
“We did,” Cenn confirmed. “We ran remote diagnostics and performed a number of tests that verified all the relay’s functions. But still, we don’t seem to be picking up anything from the two Starfleet ships out there. It may be nothing; both crews might be engaged in operations that preclude assembling and transmitting their regular comm packets, or perhaps they’ve both encountered some astronomical phenomena that are interfering with their transmissions.”
“Both of them?” Ro asked. “At the same time? They’re not traveling anywhere near each other.”
“It does seem strange,” Cenn agreed. “That’s why I’ve brought it to you.”
“Get Chief Chao and Lieutenant Tenmei, and have them take the Rio Grande through the wormhole,” Ro said. “Have the chief bring whoever she needs to perform direct testing on the relay. Let’s find out what the problem is and how we can fix it.”
“Right away, Captain,” Cenn said. He headed for the doors, but as they parted, Ro called after him. He stopped and turned back around, the doors shutting behind him with a click.
“Is it possible that somebody’s intentionally interfering with the operations of the comm relay?” Ro asked.
Cenn shrugged. “I’m not sure what that would accomplish,” he said. “The Dominion’s been as quiet as ever.”
“And we know that the Dominion’s been quiet from our sensor buoys in the Gamma Quadrant,” Ro said. “But if there’s a problem with the relay, then we wouldn’t be receiving any alarms.”
Cenn nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “And no alarms have reached us since we noted the missing comm packets from the Robinson and the Enterprise. But we haven’t received any alarms for quite a while, even when we were receiving regular transmissions from those ships.”
Ro inhaled deeply, then let out her breath in a noisy exhalation. “Let’s not take any chances,” she said. “Increase our alert status. As long as we might be deaf and blind in the Gamma Quadrant, we should be prepared.”
“Yes, Captain,” Cenn said. “I’ll see to it.”
Deep Space 9’s first officer headed through the doors to the captain’s office, back into ops. As he descended the steps, he understood that his shift had just gotten considerably more complicated.
35
Chief Engineer Jeannette Chao finished entering commands into the control station, then stepped back and waited for the results. Beside her stood Ensign th’Shant, a member of her engineering team. “What do you think, Vakell?” she asked.
The ensign peered at the display screen, his antennae shifting forward slightly in a subtle way that Chao had come to read as intense concentration. “It is difficult to know,” said th’Shant, his words pronounced very carefully in his heavily accented Andorian voice. “But I do not anticipate finding the problem.”
Chao and th’Shant had traveled from Deep Space 9 and through the wormhole aboard Rio Grande, with Tenmei at the helm. When they reached the communications relay, they pressurized and warmed its interior, and charged the gravity grid. With life support established, they transported inside and began running diagnostics on the equipment. They spent the afternoon executing every test they could, as well as reviewing the performance logs, all with no result. As best they could tell, the relay functioned perfectly.
As if reacting to her thoughts, the final diagnostic finished running, chirping its notification and posting the results to the display before them. Chao read through all of the text, but she needn’t have. Every indicator glowed green.
“This does not make sense,” th’Shant said. “We have tested the relay in every way possible. We’ve even run a diagnostic of the diagnostic system itself. Everything reads operational, and yet we know that there’s a problem.”
“Maybe it’s not a problem with the relay, though,” Chao said. “They diagnosed the issue when we didn’t receive the regular comm packets from Starfleet’s vessels in the Gamma Quadrant. Maybe those ships just didn’t transmit their packets.”
“That’s certainly a possibility,” th’Shant agreed. “But it’s not one we can easily test if we’re not in direct contact with the ships.”
Chao reached up to the control station and closed down its diagnostic-operations interface as she wrestled with their dilemma. “Maybe there is another test we can try,” she said. “Maybe we can stand in for those ships, at least in local space.”
“That might tell us more,” th’Shant said, his antennae shifting upward a touch.
Chao shut down the workstation, then tapped at her combadge, contacting Lieutenant Tenmei aboard Rio Grande. A moment later, the two engineers materialized aboard the runabout’s transporter pad. They moved forward into the vessel’s main cabin, where Tenmei sat at the helm console. Through the front ports, Chao saw the communications relay floating in space.
The chief engineer sat down beside Tenmei and operated the comm controls. “Opening a channel to the station via the relay,” she said, narrating her actions as th’Shant watched over her shoulder. “Rio Grande to Deep Space Nine,” she said. “Come in, Deep Space Nine. This is Chief Chao.”
“Rio Grande, this is Deep Space Nine,” said the voice of Colonel Cenn. “You fixed the relay, Chief. Good work.”
“Actually, we’ve done nothing but execute a series of diagnostics,” Chao said, “all of which tell us that the relay is in perfect working order.”
“That sounds contrary to what circumstances are telling us, Chief,” Cenn said.
“I know, Colonel,” Chao said. “That’s why I want to try something else. I’m going to use this channel to transmit periodically back to the Alpha Quadrant. Please respond as quickly as you can each time I contact the station.”
“Understood,” Cenn said. “I’ll be here.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the chief engineer. “Chao out.” She looked over at Tenmei. “Lieutenant, take us to the edge of the Idran system, to the last planet.”
“Yes, sir,” Tenmei said. Her hands danced across her controls, and the runabout hummed around them, its impulse engines engaging. Chao knew that Tenmei would pilot the runabout up out of the deepest part of the Idran star’s gravitational well, then employ the warp drive to carry them to the outer planetary rim of the system.
Before Rio Grande went to warp, Chao contacted DS9 again. Colonel Cenn responded at once. When they finally reached the last planet, they repeated the exercise, succeeding once again.
Frustrated, Chao decided to make one more attempt. “Lieutenant,” she said, addressing Tenmei, “take us two hundred light-hours away at maximum warp.”
“On what vector, Chief?” Tenmei asked.
“Take us along the path that the civilian Typhon Pact ships have to follow,” Chao said.
Nearly an hour later, Tenmei reported that they had reached the specified distance from the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the wormhole. Chao once again opened a channel to the station. “Rio Grande to Deep Space Nine,” s
he said, feeling as though she’d repeated the phrase a hundred times that day already. “This is Chief Chao.”
The engineer waited, knowing that the greater distance to the comm relay and DS9 would create a lag in the transmission signal. Seconds passed, and then a minute. Tenmei and th’Shant exchanged anxious expressions with her. They waited a second full minute, and then a third.
They received no response.
Chao looked at th’Shant, who said, “I guess there is no problem with the relay.”
“No,” Chao said, “but there is a problem somewhere out here, and we’ve just gotten closer to finding it.”
36
Trok stood at one end of the largest of Eletrix’s cargo holds, which easily could have held Ren Fejin within its confines several times over. He waited as the ship’s executive officer, Subcommander Venalur Atreev, spoke into a communications panel set into the bulkhead. Trok also waited for the possibility of his imminent death—a feeling to which he had lately grown far too accustomed.
“We are ready in both of the larger bays, and in both of the smaller ones,” Atreev said, adding the authorization for three other holds on the ship.
Trok believed that the true success or failure of his journey into the Gamma Quadrant would occur within the next few moments. Achieving his goal would see him headed out of the Dominion, toward the wormhole and, beyond it, to the Breen Confederacy. Disappointment would see the atoms of his body scattered throughout open space tens of thousands of light-years from home.
Several sections forward of where Trok stood, he knew, eight Jem’Hadar soldiers sat in detention cells, perhaps anticipating their own fates. In a separate section, guarded by a contingent of more than a dozen security officers, the Changeling continued his refusal to barter with Commander T’Jul. Fortunately, the commander had neither accepted the intransigence of Laas nor the unwillingness of the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta to act without the sanction of their god. T’Jul allowed some time to pass as an opportunity for the shape-shifter to reconsider his position, but she did not wait too long.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night Page 39
