Security

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  At first, the voice was Eevraith’s. Then Tev realized it was a woman’s voice.

  “Mother?”

  “That was the last straw, Tev. That was the last time you disobey my orders or flaunt my authority.”

  “Tev?” she repeated, but it wasn’t his mother this time.

  It was Commander Gomez.

  “We’re not going to stop, are we? And that’s because you screwed up. Just like you did on Kharzh’ulla. Just like you did at Avril.”

  “She’s right,” Eevraith said. “And now we’re all going to die because of you.”

  The shuttle crashed into the surface of the planet.

  And Tev awoke with a start, sweat matting down the hair on his body and soaking through the sheets of his bunk.

  That dream had been a gift from an ancient species known as the Furies, whom Tev encountered while serving on the Madison. It was years before the dream stopped recurring every night, and he hadn’t had it for months—until the da Vinci’s mission to Kharzh’ulla and his reunion with Eevraith.

  This time, though, was different. Neither Eevraith nor Commander Gomez had ever been part of the dream before.

  “Computer, time.”

  “The time is 0950 hours.”

  Tev snuffled. Not even two hours’ sleep. “Computer, locate Specialist Faulwell.”

  “Crewperson Faulwell is in the mess hall.”

  Tev got up from his bunk and changed into uniform. Bartholomew is probably still working on his Syclarian article. Tev needed someone to talk to, and Bartholomew was the only person on the ship he’d even consider a personal conversation with.

  A scattering of crew members were in the mess hall when Tev arrived. Several engineers—Hammett, Lankford, Bennett, and Phelps—were drinking coffee along with a woman Tev did not recognize, but whom he presumed to be Lise Irastorza, the replacement for the late Theodore Deverick. The gamma-shift bridge crew were also just getting up to leave after what appeared to be a large post-shift meal.

  Tev went straight for Bartholomew, who had a table to himself, his padds spread out as they had been in the observation lounge. “Excuse me, Bartholomew, may I join you?”

  The thin linguist looked up and smiled when he saw Tev. “Sure, have a seat.” The smile grew and he added, “I’m afraid I don’t have any apple rancher candies.”

  “It is a bit early for those.” Tev found himself returning the smile. He wasn’t sure why he felt so much at ease around Bartholomew. Perhaps it was because he did not seem intimidated by Tev’s brilliance.

  “What can I do for you, Tev?”

  “I am in need of counsel, and you are the only person on this ship I trust to provide it. I am having—difficulties with Commander Gomez.” He filled Bartholomew in on their recent conversation. “The poor woman is obsessed with me, and now, because I refuse to return her affections, she is sabotaging my career. I cannot go to Captain Gold—he would likely take her side.”

  Bartholomew was frowning now, and scratching his chin. “Uh, Tev? I don’t know how to tell you this, but—” He sighed. “You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

  Tev found that impossible to believe. “About what?”

  Shaking his head, “I honestly don’t know where to start. But the biggie is Commander Gomez’s alleged affection for you. Trust me—that is all in your head.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She has gone from indecisive and hesitant to aggressive and hostile. Of course, she—”

  “Tev, you’re thinking like a Tellarite.”

  Confused, Tev asked, “How else would I think?”

  “Well, if you’re gonna psychoanalyze a human, then you should think like one. Humans don’t court each other that way. Hostility isn’t a sign of respect—especially from her.”

  “What is it a sign of then?”

  “That she’s really really really pissed off, and if you don’t do something about it—and not what you think you should do about it—it’ll be more than your promotion prospects that you’ll have to worry about.” Bartholomew took a quick sip of his coffee. “Tev, you are an incredibly brilliant engineer, but you’re not perfect. And you’re not among Tellarites.”

  “You have not said anything of which I wasn’t already aware.” Tev snuffled. This conversation was starting to annoy him. He supposed that Bartholomew’s insights were useful, since he, like the commander, was human, but still…

  “Then you should probably start acting appropriately. You’re third in command, Tev, not first, and not second.”

  “I am also aware of that. I suppose you will also tell me that I fear that others will steal my work.”

  “Do you fear that?”

  Tev snuffled angrily. “Of course not. I can’t imagine why anyone would believe that I would think the crew of this ship to be on a level with Eevraith.”

  Bartholomew raised an eyebrow. “This is the same Eevraith who took your definitive work on that orbital ring around Kharzh’ulla and claimed it as his own, a brilliantly written monograph—I read it, remember—that made Eevraith’s entire career. That Eevraith?”

  “I do not appreciate your sarcasm, Bartholomew.” Tev snuffled again, and made to get up from his chair. “The life Eevraith now has would not have been for me. I’m better off.”

  “Sure, you know that now and feel that way now. But twenty years ago? When Eevraith first stole your work, Romulan puns and all?”

  Tev stopped rising and remained seated, remembering that Bartholomew had been the one—at Commander Gomez’s instigation—to read the monograph Eevraith claimed as his own, and recognized the Romulan curses he’d worked in as puns to an audience that knew nothing of the language.

  Bartholomew continued. “You were just a young student. The betrayal had to hurt, and I can imagine that you would’ve sworn to yourself—even subconsciously—that you wouldn’t let that happen to you again.”

  Tev almost smiled. “You’re thinking like a human.”

  “Maybe.” Bartholomew did smile. “That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong.” He dropped the smile. “Look, whether you like it or not, this is a team, and a small one at that. I know you can work with people. You’ve come close more than once. But you’ve got to set aside your ego.”

  “And my arrogance, too?”

  “No, you need that.” Bartholomew chuckled. “I know Tellarite, remember? I know that the word for arrogance and the word for self are one and the same.”

  Tev nodded. He remembered his surprise that the primary human tongue didn’t consider the concepts synonymous.

  “But you can’t just barrel through on your own brilliance and hope everyone will catch up. Before you know it, you’re going to fall behind.”

  “Senior staff and S.C.E. team, report to the bridge.”

  Lieutenant Shabalala’s voice snapped Tev to attention. He stood up, as did Bartholomew.

  “Looks like we’re needed,” Bartholomew said.

  “Indeed.” Tev turned to the linguist. “Thank you, Bartholomew, you have given me…a great deal to think about.”

  Nodding, Bartholomew said, “I just hope that they’re calling us to the bridge because they found Elizabeth and Dr. Bashir.”

  “That is my hope as well.” And with that, they departed the mess hall together.

  Chapter

  10

  Peace Officer Headquarters

  Pibroch City, Izar

  TEN YEARS AGO

  L ieutenant Corsi was still wiping sleep out of her eyes when she entered Officer Vale’s office. “You called me?”

  “Yes, I did.” Vale sounded stiffer and more formal than she had over the past three days of their investigation. She was standing behind her desk, leaning forward, her hands flat on the desk’s surface.

  It had been a tiring few days, as Corsi and Vale had spent every waking hour—which outnumbered their sleeping hours by a ratio of twenty-one to three— going over the records of the previous homicides and talking over subspace to everyone involved that they could tra
ck down. They also determined that the killer was likely to be humanoid—the wound patterns all indicated that the angle of the killing blast was likely to be from someone of average human height standing about a meter away. Since the majority population on all the planets where the homicides took place was humanoid, this was hardly conclusive of anything, and the lack of any kind of trace evidence made it even less so. It was frustrating that, with sensors that could detect a particular grain of sand on a desert planet, they couldn’t figure out who’d killed eleven people.

  Izar itself had been all but locked down, with temporary curfews put in place and regular sensor sweeps looking for the phaser in question. All the previous murders had come in threes, so everyone was waiting for the third in this sequence to be completed. In particular, human women with long dark hair were encouraged to stay in their homes until the person was caught.

  Corsi couldn’t help but notice that both Vale and Kim fit the bill.

  She had managed to steal a few hours’ sleep with Dar—which meant she had gotten very little sleep at all—until the summons came on her combadge. Dar had barely noticed the call, and she told him that she had to go to work and she’d see him later.

  Vale stared at her now with a rather intense expression. Corsi wondered if that meant they’d found something.

  “Lieutenant Corsi, after I first briefed you three days ago, did Officer Giacoia give you access to one of our comm terminals so you could contact the Roosevelt?”

  Not liking the tone in the officer’s voice at all, Corsi asked, “You know I did. You’re treating this like an interrogation—why?”

  Vale did not answer the question, instead posing another: “After doing so, did you then make an unauthorized call to a Lieutenant Dar Ableen?”

  “It wasn’t unauthorized,” Corsi said tightly. “And if it was—well, I’m sorry, it wasn’t my intention to break any regulations. What is this about, Officer?”

  “When I summoned you here this morning, did you come from Lieutenant Ableen’s quarters at the Starfleet base in Garthtown?”

  Putting her hands on her hips, Corsi said, “I’m not answering any more questions until you answer some of mine, Officer.”

  Finally standing upright, Vale ran her hands through her auburn tresses. “I did a search on equipment that could hide all traces of evidence in a manner that would allow these crimes to take place. I found something in the Starfleet database, something that was only just declassified a month ago, so any of the locals investigating the previous homicides wouldn’t even have been allowed to know about it. It’s a stealth suit, one that is to be used for anthropological observation of pre-warp civilizations.”

  “Okay.” Corsi had a vague recollection of reading an update about the declassification of that technology. “What does that have to do with this?”

  “Only one of the murders had a witness—the second one on Centauri.”

  Corsi nodded. “Elra Gren.” The Trill was a computer programmer who was engaged to be married.

  “Right.” Vale sighed. “That witness claimed that the phaser blast seemed to come out of nowhere. Since it was dark, the detective in charge assumed that the witness just didn’t see the murderer, but what if he couldn’t?” Vale turned her screen around so Corsi could see it. “Starfleet has a presence at all four locations—Starbase 74 is in orbit of Tarsas III, there’s a base on Berengaria, a supply depot on Alpha Centauri that Starfleet leases, and the base here in Garthtown.”

  Now Corsi was getting irritated. She didn’t even bother to look at the screen. “What of it? I doubt that there’s a planet in the Federation that doesn’t have some kind of Starfleet presence somewhere. And you can’t possibly believe that a Starfleet officer could do this.”

  Vale snapped. “I can’t possibly believe that a sentient being did this, Lieutenant! But the evidence sure as hell indicates that one did.”

  “You will modify your tone when speaking to me, Officer,” Corsi said in a low, dangerous voice. She had had just about enough of this amateur civilian as she was likely to take.

  “No, Lieutenant, I don’t think I will. You see, I found something interesting when I did a search of Starfleet personnel who were either assigned to or in the vicinity of the four facilities in question, and then cross-checked it with people who’d have access to classified technology. We only got three hits. One of them was Lieutenant Dar Ableen.”

  Corsi felt her mouth go dry. “What?”

  “Lieutenant Ableen was on or near the site of all eleven murders, including working in the supply office of Starbase 74. The stealth suit was developed by a research team on that starbase, and Lieutenant Ableen was assigned to them as their supply officer. Lieutenant Ableen’s height and build also match with the likely height and build of the murderer.”

  Corsi could not believe what she was hearing. “This is absurd. Dar would never do anything like this. He can’t possibly—” She shook her head, as if coming out of a daze. “You said there were three hits.”

  “I’ve already been in contact with Captain Van Olden, and the other two are also being tracked down. Meantime, I intend to question Lieutenant Ableen.”

  Now Corsi was furious. “You went over my head? I ought to—” And then she cut herself off. Of course she went over my head. The evidence makes Dar at least to be a suspect, and she had to eliminate him. Naturally, she’s going to treat me suspiciously. Stop being an idiot. “I apologize, Officer, you’re right. I have a relationship with a suspect in a homicide investigation. It would be—inappropriate for me to remain as the liaison between the Izar Peace Officers and Starfleet.”

  Vale let out a long breath, sounding relieved. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Honestly, I don’t believe you have anything to do with this—you’ve been too thorough in digging through the evidence. But I had to be sure.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Look, let me call Dar in here. He’ll come in on his own, answer your questions, and everything will be fine. I’ve known Dar since we were first-year cadets. I can’t believe he’d do something like this.”

  “Like I said, Lieutenant, I can’t believe anyone would do this—which means that anyone could be responsible. I’m not feeling very trusting right now.”

  Corsi smiled at that. “I’m in security—we’re never trusting. It gets in the way of the work.”

  Vale returned the smile. “That sounds like something my mother would say.”

  Sure enough, Dar was more than happy to beam over from Garthtown. A few minutes later, his lean form beamed directly into Vale’s office.

  “Lieutenant Ableen, I’m Officer Christine Vale.” She stepped around her desk and offered her hand—but not, Corsi noted, in a handshake. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you for your weapon.”

  Corsi hadn’t even noticed that Dar had his sidearm. Damn, Dar, how dumb can you get? Corsi had her phaser, of course, but she was security—she needed to be armed at all times. There were times when Corsi wondered why they even bothered to issue weapons to supply officers like Dar. Besides, this building had a scattering field that prevented unauthorized weapons from firing—even with that, though, regulations stated that only peace officers could carry any kind of weapon in here. Corsi’s status as a Starfleet liaison let her off the hook—though that was murkier now—but Dar wasn’t allowed to have his, even though it didn’t work at the moment.

  Dar gave Vale the melting smile that he had perfected on Domenica by their third year at the Academy. “Be happy to, Officer.” He unholstered the phaser, held it out to Vale—

  —then grabbed her wrist with the other hand and yanked Vale toward him in a modified sok-pal grab from the Vulcan V’Shan martial art, at which Dar was at the level of ahn-was, which was as high as any human had achieved. Before Corsi had had a chance to register what had happened, he had Vale in a rol-shaya grip. Corsi had been in Dar’s rol-shaya before—the officer wasn’t moving until Dar let her.

  “You know the grip, Domenica,” Dar said. “I make o
ne slight muscle movement with my right forearm, and her neck snaps like a twig. Pity, really.” He smiled again, but this wasn’t the melting smile, it was one she’d never seen on his face before. “I’d rather the third kill was like the first two. The rush is so much better that way.”

  Corsi shook her head. “So it was you.”

  “Of course it was me! How could you even doubt it? Now put your phaser down, Domenica. Let me go with the officer here, so I can kill her properly, like the other two.”

  Glancing down, Corsi saw that she had, in fact, drawn her phaser as soon as Dar grabbed Vale. The action hadn’t been conscious, but drilled into her after all her years of security training.

  The next action she took was completely conscious. Pausing only for a second to aim, she blew Dar Ableen’s head off.

  Chapter

  11

  U.S.S. da Vinci

  in search operations between Stations Kel-Artis and Deep Space 9

  NOW

  F abian Stevens stared at Domenica Corsi in shock. “My God, Dom, you—” He shook his head, barely able to parse what she’d just told him. “What happened next?”

  She shrugged. “It was over. Izar went back to normal. Vale and I both got commendations. I tried to point out that she was the one who did all the leg-work, but she insisted that I was the one who saved the day. She told me—” Domenica hesitated. “She told me that she could never have done what I did—just shoot him like that, especially given our…our relationship.” Chuckling bitterly, she added, “She applied to Starfleet Academy the next week. Said she’d always wanted to, but didn’t want to let her family down. But after seeing me in action, she knew that it was the right thing to do. I told her then that she was nuts.”

  “Yeah,” Fabian said dryly, “I can see how you’d think that. I mean, she’s just security chief on the Enterprise, after all—not like that’s a major assignment or anything…”

  Harshly, Domenica said, “I didn’t mean that she would be bad security, Fabe, I meant that she was nuts to use me as an example. All I did was shoot the man I loved.”

  His thoughts still whirling, Fabian asked, “Why did he do it? How—”