Текст книги "Section 31: Rogue "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Riker heard surprised mutters among the Slaytonsurvivors, which receded slowly after Roget gave a terse order for silence. All eyes were upon Zweller now, and none looked very friendly.

Apparently oblivious to everyone in the chamber except for Grelun, Zweller was still holding his particle weapon, his arms at his sides. In a steely voice, Zweller said, “Not true, Grelun. I could have done a lot more than just tamper with your communications and security systems. I could have sabotaged the cloaking devices that keep this place hidden from your enemies. But I didn’tdo that.”

Cloaking devices.The words echoed in Riker’s mind. Looks like the Romulans have been stacking the deck, after all.He saw from Troi’s expression that she must have come to the same conclusion. But what,he wondered, did the Romulans have to gain?

Zweller continued: “And do you know why, Grelun? Because I believe in your cause. I want to help you stop the slaughter of your people.”

Grelun appeared unmoved. “You outworlders and your schemes. You plot and you plan. You manipulate us as though we were but pieces in a game. And who suffers? Those who dwell in the provinces you conquer.”

“We’ve never ‘conquered’ anyone, Grelun,” Riker said. “And I would like a chance to prove it to you.”

“How, human?” Grelun said.

“I offer you a neutral place to meet with us: aboard our starship, the Enterprise.There, you can learn more about our history.”

Grelun laughed, then said, “The writing of history is ever the privilege of the conqueror. Life here was far better, far simpler, before outworlders came among us. Then, only Ruardh and her death‑dealing minions stood against us.”

“What’s really bothering you, Grelun?” Zweller said. “Are you regretting Falhain’s decision to accept aid from the Romulans? Are you worried about what they’ll expect in return after the Federation leaves?”

Zweller had evidently touched a nerve; Grelun was baring the razor‑sharp points of his silvery teeth. One didn’t need to be a Betazoid to divine his emotional state.

“Get down!” Troi yelled.

Grelun raised his swords high and shouted, “Kill them all!” At least two dozen Chiarosan rebels advanced, amid an ear‑splitting, ululating cry that seemed to issue from a single gigantic throat. Gomp turned tail and ran as Riker and Zweller both made rolling dives to the stone floor, bringing their weapons up as they landed. Riker could already hear weapons discharges, even before Zweller began firing his disruptor at the oncoming soldiers.

Then Riker realized that he was hearing weapons fire coming from behindthe charging Chiarosans. He noticed the distinctive whooshing sound of a Starfleet compression phaser rifle, a weapon he’d not seen in the hands of Grelun’s troops.

The sound of phaser blasts grew louder and the Chiarosans’ united charge became a disorganized scatter. Grelun, his bare forearms badly burned by energy fire, fell back into his men. Chiarosans had begun dropping to the floor.

Moments later, none of the rebels was standing. Miraculously, none of the Starfleet contingent appeared seriously hurt. Near the chamber’s far wall, behind the stunned Chiarosans, stood Lieutenant Hawk, armed with a phaser rifle. Beside him was Admiral Batanides, who was holding a hand phaser.

Zweller smiled broadly as they approached. “Marta, I was expecting to see Johnny. What the hell are youdoing here?”

Her face was set into hard lines. “Saving your ass yet again, apparently.”

Riker noticed that something subtle had changed in the way the admiral carried herself. It was as though she had aged a decade since he’d seen her last on the Enterprise.

Zweller apparently sensed something, too. Anxiously, he asked, “How is Aubin?”

“Dead,” she replied coldly, gripping her phaser hard. “And now really isn’t the best time to discuss it, Corey.”

“Admiral,” Riker said, happy to interrupt. “Since you managed to get in here, I’m assuming you also have a way of getting everyone out.”

“Right, Commander.” To Hawk, she said, “ Lieutenant, signal Captain Picard. Tell him we’ve got ten to beam up.”

Hawk nodded. Tapping his combadge, he said, “Away team to Kepler.”

Riker was relieved to learn that Zweller’s gambit had paid off. The captain had indeed brought a shuttlecraft into transporter range for a lightning rescue. Riker smiled at Troi, who grinned back, evidently thinking similar thoughts.

Then Riker looked again toward Hawk and realized that something wasn’t right. The lieutenant was repeatedly tapping his combadge, which issued a burst of static before going silent.

Hawk’s eyes locked with Riker’s. “I can’t raise the Kepler.”

Riker told himself that the shuttle’s transmitter might simply have run afoul of the local weather patterns. But he knew that the combadge’s silence might also indicate that something far more serious had happened. He felt a deep chill spreading in his gut.

“Damn!” Batanides said. “Keep trying. And let’s find someplace to hide. The last thing we need now is to get captured by the Chiarosans. Or the Romulans.”

“Admiral,” Riker said. “Maybe the Romulans are exactly what we need.”

Batanides seemed to grasp his meaning. “What’s your plan, Commander?”

Hawk thought that the Chiarosans looked intimidating even when sprawled unconscious on the floor. He tried to ignore them as he adjusted his tricorder to scan for Romulan biosignatures. While Hawk worked, the admiral quickly brought Riker, Troi, and Commander Roget upto‑date, including some of the details surrounding Ambassador Tabor’s death, Captain Picard’s rescue mission, and the discovery of a Romulan cloaking field some five AUs south of the Chiaros system’s orbital plane.

When Hawk idly mentioned that the energy field the Enterprisehad encountered might have been partly responsible for the Slayton’s destruction, a collective gasp went up among five of the bedraggled former hostages. Zweller, however, stood apart from his crewmates, stony‑faced. Hawk wondered: Had the Section 31 agent known all along about theSlayton ’s fate?

“Oh, my God,” Troi said, her dark eyes moistening as she appraised Zweller’s colleagues. “No one’s told them.” Hawk’s tricorder nearly slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers when he realized what a bombshell he had dropped on these already‑shaken people.

Admiral Batanides interrupted Hawk’s unpleasant train of thought. “Are any more troops coming, Lieutenant?”

Hawk forced himself to concentrate on the business at hand. He raised the tricorder again, watching as its indicators moved slowly across the readout panel. “No, sir,” he said. “But there are definitely Romulan lifesigns here. It’s hard to tell, scanning through all this rock, but there may be as many as half a dozen of them in various parts of the complex.”

“Scan for tetryon particles,” Riker said. Without hesitation, Hawk again adjusted the tricorder and resumed scanning.

“What good will thatdo?” barked Gomp.

“Romulan ships are powered by quantum singularities,” Riker explained patiently, “that usually give off tetryon particles as a by‑product.”

“Got it,” Hawk said, smiling triumphantly–the tricorder had indeed picked up the fingerprint of a Romulan quantum singularity drive. “And it’s located exactly where Commander Zweller’s message said the spacecraft hangars would be.”

Hawk noticed then that all eyes were upon Commander Riker, who clutched a Chiarosan pistol in his right hand. Acutely aware that they were looking to him to tell them their next move, Riker turned a questioning look on the admiral. Batanides gave him a quick nod, effectively transferring command of the mission to him.

“Mr. Zweller, you’ll lead us to the hangar,” Riker began. “Deanna, I want you to keep trying to raise the Kepler.Mr. Roget, I’d like your people to bring Grelun along with us. Lieutenant Hawk will assist you.”

As the counselor tried without success to contact the shuttlecraft, Hawk stowed the tricorder and walked toward the Chiarosan leader’s supine form. Unconsciousness did little to soften Grelun’s fierce visage; it occurred to Hawk that it would be very bad if he were to awaken unexpectedly. He began helping two of Roget’s officers half‑carry and half‑drag the man, whose dead weight was akin to that of a small tree. The intensity of this planet’s gravitational field wasn’t making matters any easier.

As he strained, Hawk heard Troi raise an objection. “So now it’s ourturn to start taking hostages?”

“I prefer to think of him as a shield, Deanna,” Riker temporized as the group began moving. “The Chiarosans might not fire on us while their leader’s in harm’s way.”

Zweller shrugged and looked over his shoulder at Riker as he led the group along. “Then again, they might not let that stop them. They’re desperate people, Commander.”

And so are we,Hawk thought, his back and shoulder muscles afire as he continued to help move the insensate Chiarosan.

The three Romulan officers wasted no time confiscating Crusher’s phaser and combadge. Crusher understood, too late, that she must have locked the Kepler’s transporter onto the engine room of a Romulan ship located somewhere within the Chiarosan rebel base. Romulan warp cores, after all, were known to scatter tetryon particles. In her haste, the “shadow” in the tetryon field, which had probably been created by the shielding of the warp core itself, must have looked like a safe refuge. But that knowledge could do her little good now.

As the seconds slowly ticked by, Crusher’s apprehension grew. Where is Jean‑Luc?

The female Romulan, who appeared to be in charge, herded the doctor into the corner of the room farthest from the warp core. The woman spoke tersely into a small communication device attached to her uniform.

“Centurion, this is T’Lei from the technical group. We have captured and disarmed a lone Starfleet officer in our engine room. I presume she is here to try to hijack our vessel.”

“Detain her,” replied a harried‑sounding male voice. Crusher heard some sort of commotion going on in the background. The two male Romulan technicians, who had clearly heard the noises as well, looked nervously at one another.

But T’Lei never took her eyes off Crusher, and the weapon in the Romulan woman’s hand never wavered.

“Centurion?” T’Lei said, tapping the transmitter on her tunic.

A moment later, the voice replied: “We have just been advised that the Starfleet prisoners have escaped. They have captured Grelun and are taking him in your direction. If they wish to leave the planet, they will have no choice other than to take your ship.”

Crusher felt a surge of hope rise within her. But she didn’t dare move.

“Surely Grelun’s troops will neutralize them before they can attempt it,” T’Lei said.

“No. They will stand down, to ensure their leader’s safety. You and your men can better handle this situation using stealth. There are only ten escapees, after all. Expect them to arrive momentarily.”

Crusher’s heart abruptly sank. They’re going to walk right into an ambush.

“Understood, Centurion,” T’Lei said, signing off. The male technicians raised disruptor pistols of their own.

Wearing a viper’s smile, T’Lei spoke directly to Crusher. “The ship’s hatch is narrow, Human. Your friends must enter it single‑file.

“Rest assured, we will be ready for them.”

Jean‑Luc, where the hell are you?

* * *

A moment after the Kepler’s instrument panel went dark, the emergency lighting kicked in, coloring the cockpit a dull red. Picard silently thanked whatever capricious fortune continued to keep the shuttle’s structural integrity field functioning, though he knew it soon wouldn’t matter. The two remaining Chiarosan fighter craft were still closing in, and he didn’t even know for sure how close to the ground the shuttle had plunged.

Picard channeled every joule of emergency power to the transporter, taking care to leave the structural integrity field in place. Obediently, the transporter controls lit up. Fortunately, he still had a lock on Beverly’s coordinates, and had stayed within nominal transporter range of them.

But he could also see that the transporter’s power level had fallen far below safe operational levels. There was no power to spare anything else now, even life support. It was going to be close.

He checked the transporter’s scanner, which again showed evidence of tetryons. Beverly had evidently beamed into a tetryon‑free “shadow” located in the very heart of the most abundant tetryon activity in the rebel base.

Which told Picard what he could expect to find at the beam‑down site: Romulans.

Picard left his flight seat long enough to grab a hand phaser from the weapons locker. He entered the “ energize” command and shut off every other onboard system.

The hull creaked and groaned, and one of the braces let go with a loud snap. As the light from the transporter began cascading around him, something slammed very hard into the Kepler.His ears popped as the cabin’s atmosphere vented into the chill Chiarosan night.

A gale‑force, ionized wind ripped the shuttle’s hull apart as though it were nothing more than an autumn leaf.

* * *

Hawk was relieved beyond words when Riker’s appraisal of the Chiarosans turned out to be correct; when they’d seen their unconscious leader being spirited away by ten heavily armed Starfleet officers, the Chiarosans had made no move to bar their way to the hangar facility, nor did they pretend ignorance about the location of the Romulan vessel Hawk’s tricorder had detected. After Zweller had made a rather emphatic inquiry into the matter–all the while pointing a beam weapon at the slumbering Grelun’s skull–a Chiarosan technician sullenly punched an authorization code into a console, decloaking a small Romulan scout ship. The vessel’s narrow hatchway now beckoned.

“Scan that ship for Romulans,” Batanides ordered Hawk, who swiftly consulted his tricorder.

After a moment, Hawk shook his head. “I’m picking up too much tetryon activity. It’s jamming my scans.”

“Deanna?” Riker prompted.

Troi closed her eyes, reaching into the small Romulan vessel with her empathic senses. “All I’m picking up right now is a lot of emotional tension,” Troi said. “As though several people were about to engage in combat.”

“Or maybe preparing an ambush?” Zweller ventured.

“Maybe I should knock,” Gomp said, apparently to no one.

Batanides raised her weapon, signaling an end to the debate. “We can’t stay here, people. We’ve no choice but to chance it. Let’s go.” Riker nodded his acknowledgment and took the point, with Zweller and Roget immediately behind him.

Hawk tucked his tricorder away. Muscles straining, he resumed the not inconsiderable task of helping to drag Grelun forward as the group moved across the hangar floor toward the open hatch.

* * *

Picard shook off the slight dizziness he felt when the transporter released him. It had been close, but he was satisfied that he was in one piece.

Phaser drawn, he now stood in what appeared to be an engine room. To his right was what he recognized as a Romulan warp core–obviously the source of the tetryons the Kepler’s sensors had detected. Some five meters away, in a far corner to his left, stood Crusher, surrounded by a trio of armed Romulans, one of whom had just turned in his direction. The doctor saw him as well, and rolled lithely to the deck.

Using the warp core as cover, Picard opened fire.

Riker held his Chiarosan disruptor at eye level as he entered the hatch. He expected to be fired upon at any moment, and was mildly surprised when nothing of the kind happened. As the others followed, Riker led the way into the crew compartment.

It was empty.

Riker heard an electronic hum coming from the forward portion of the vessel. It sounded as though someone were in the process of activating the scout ship’s instruments, perhaps even preparing the vessel for flight. His weapon ready, he moved toward the sound as Zweller, Roget, and Batanides covered his back. Cautiously, Riker stepped through an open hatch and into a small cockpit.

He was shocked to see Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher seated behind the instrument panel, evidently trying to make sense of the Romulan script on the control panels.

Picard looked up and smiled broadly. “What keptyou, Number One?”

Lieutenant Hawk thought that fitting a Tellarite male, a half‑Betazoid woman, eight assorted humans, and an insensate Chiarosan aboard such a small craft might be problematic, but it turned out that there was enough room, after all. But only barely. Hawk accompanied Batanides into the small cockpit, where the admiral had relieved Crusher to allow her to assist Riker, Troi, and Dr. Gomp in tending to a trio of unconscious Romulan technicians. For a moment, Hawk had wondered how much important information the Romulans might reveal–until he considered how crowded the vessel already was. There simply wasn’t enough room to take the Romulans along.

The lieutenant was impressed by how well the admiral knew her way around Romulan instrumentation. It made sense, though; she wasan intelligence officer, after all. Perhaps the study of things Romulan was her specialty. Hawk watched her carefully, memorizing each control she touched, each command sequence she entered.

As Picard and the admiral powered up the little vessel, the Chiarosans scrambled to open the hangar doors for them, apparently unwilling to engage in a game of “chicken,” which would more than likely get their leader killed.

Hawk smiled triumphantly. “We’re actually doing it. We’re getting away.”

“We haven’t gotten away yet,Lieutenant,” Picard said, still working busily alongside the admiral to get the ship moving.

Batanides nodded in agreement with the captain. “They can still chase us. Or even shoot us down, Grelun or no Grelun.”

Seconds later, they were under way. The scout ship ascended quickly into the chill darkness of Nightside. Hawk continued observing and memorizing while the admiral coached Picard on the instrument panel.

“That blue rectangular touchpad beside your right hand should control the cloaking device. Activate it.”

Picard complied, smiling ironically. “I suppose we’re in violation of the Treaty of Algeron now, Admiral.”

She chuckled gently. “I don’t think the Romulan diplomatic corps will be in any position to complain about that, under the circumstances.” Hawk was well aware that under the current Federation–Romulan treaties concerning Chiaros IV, neither side were permitted to conceal either personnel or equipment anywhere on the planet.

He wondered what other secrets the Romulans guarded–and if Zweller had any inkling of what those secrets might be.

The admiral frowned as she stared at a readout. “The cloak’s not working.”

Picard activated the comm system. “Picard to engine room.”

“Hearn here, Captain,” responded the chief engineer of the late starship Slayton.

“The cloaking device is not functioning, Mr. Hearn. We need to engage it immediately.”

“Sorry, Captain, but Commander Roget and I have our hands full right now just keeping the engines operational. The Romulan techs had everything in pieces down here.”

Hawk suddenly became aware of Zweller’s presence behind him. “I know a thing or two about cloaking devices, Marta,” the older man said.

“Then get below and get the damned thing working before they start chasing us.”

Finally seeing an opportunity to speak with Zweller in relative privacy, Hawk turned toward him. “Need a hand, Commander?”

Zweller raised a curious eyebrow.

“I did some . . . extracurricular study on Romulan cloaking technology back at the Academy,” Hawk offered. He looked toward Picard for permission.

“We’ve no shortage of qualified pilots up here, Lieutenant,” the captain said from the front of the cockpit. Picard then turned his chair toward Zweller and regarded him coolly. “Commander?”

Zweller looked significantly at Picard and Batanides for a long moment. Hawk knew that something important was passing between these three people, though he wasn’t sure exactly what it was. But it seemed clear they all shared some history together.

Zweller turned away from Picard and Batanides, and regarded Hawk with a shrug. “Why not?” he said, then began making his way aftward.

Hawk followed Zweller into the main crew compartment, past Troi and several members of the Slayton’s crew. They stepped over Grelun’s unconscious form, which was splayed across the floor while Dr. Gomp and Counselor Troi watched over him; none of the seats aboard the vessel were designed to accommodate anyone so large. Nearby, Crusher tended to what appeared to be a superficial wound on Riker’s scalp, and a nasty‑looking burn on his shoulder. Then Hawk followed Zweller down a companionway ladder and into a cramped, equipmentfilled lower compartment that reminded him of one of the horizontal Jefferies tubes aboard the Enterprise.Hawk could hear Roget and Hearn discussing their work on the engine core from around a corner junction.

Zweller removed an access panel just above the deck gridwork, revealing the cloaking device’s winking, glowing interior. Hawk found a tool kit in an adjacent drawer and handed it to Zweller, who lay supine in order to reach the leads running from the device to the ship’s main EPS lines.

After a few passes of an isodyne coupler, Zweller signaled to the cockpit that the cloak was operational. Then he rose, handed the tool kit to Hawk, and headed back toward the companionway ladder.

Hawk took a deep breath. I may never have a better chance than right now.He put a firm hand on Zweller’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

“I need to speak to you,” Hawk said softly, not wanting to be overheard by Roget or Hearn. “About Section 31.”

Zweller turned slowly around and regarded Hawk with a sober expression. “I’m afraid I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Lieutenant,” he said in an admonishing tone, his gaze dilithium‑hard.

Hawk stood his ground and stared right back at Zweller. “Ambassador Tabor told me about Thirty‑One. He told me you’re working for them, too. And he tried to convince me that losingChiaros IV and the Geminus Gulf would be better for the Federation than winning them. He even tried to recruit me to help him accomplish that goal.”

Zweller digested this in silence. He appeared to be a difficult man to catch by surprise. But that must be part and parcel of the spy game,Hawk thought.

Zweller spoke quietly after a long, introspective pause. “I suppose Tabor died before he could answer all of your . . . fundamental questions.”

Hawk nodded. “And now that we know the Romulans are mixed up with the Army of Light, I have even more questions.”

“So it appears you have a choice to make, Lieutenant. The same choice I had to make when I was around your age.”

Hawk nodded slowly. “I either have to help you or stop you.”

Zweller smiled. “You’ve got a third option, kid. You can back off. Pretend you don’t know anything about Section 31. Believe me, that would be your safest option.”

Hawk considered that for a moment, then dismissed it out of hand. If he’d been of a mind to play it safe, then he never would have gone against his father’s wishes and entered Starfleet Academy. And he’d be on a safe, dull tenure‑track in the antiquities department at some Martian university right now instead of piloting the Federation’s flagship out at the boundaries of human experience.

“Ignoring what Tabor tried to do here would be the same as helping you, wouldn’t it?” Hawk said. “No, I can’t just pretend I’m not involved, Commander. I aminvolved. And I need to know what you and Tabor were really trying to do here, and why.”

Zweller folded his arms across his chest and paused once again, evidently weighing options of his own. Finally, he said, “Let’s strike a deal, then, son: I’ll tell you whatever I think you need to know. But only afterwe get safely away from this hellhole.

“And assuming, of course, that both of us live that long.”

And with that, Zweller crossed to the ladder and climbed out of sight, leaving Hawk alone, the coppery taste of fear in his mouth.

Chapter Nine

Koval strode into the control center of the warbird Thrai Kaleh,his thoughts dark. Speculations about the Empire’s future had weighed heavily upon his mind of late. Despite the best efforts of the Tal Shiar’s vice‑chairman, Senator Vreenak, to negotiate a nonaggression pact with the sprawling Dominion, Koval found it difficult to believe that those shape‑shifting Gamma Quadrant devils–and their unctuous Vorta middlemen–would honor any such agreement for long. For months now, a sense of urgency had been steadily growing within the Tal Shiar leader’s gut, an almost desperate need to prove that the best days of the Praetor’s venerable congeries of worlds had not already passed.

Of course, there were things to be thankful for, to be sure. Nine years previously, Tarod IX, a world just on the Federation’s side of the stelai ler’lloann–the Outmarches, which the Federation called the Romulan Neutral Zone–had suffered a devastating attack by the rapacious Borg collective. Koval often wondered what would have happened had the conquest‑driven cyborgs continued across the Neutral Zone toward the core of the Empire. Could Romulus itself have survived such an onslaught? Would he have been forced to seek a long‑term alliance with the Federation, whose continual, omnidirectional expansion many in the Empire regarded as a threat in and of itself?

If the Dominion behaves as treacherously as seems likely,Koval thought glumly, then I may yet be forced to take just such an action.

Fortunately, some of the reassurance Koval sought was now displayed upon the Thrai Kaleh’s central viewscreen. He looked upon a vast assemblage of spaceborne constructs, a colossal loop of machinery, energy‑collectors, and habitat modules that dwarfed even the largest warbirds of the Praetor’s armadas. And in the ring’s center lay a concentration of unimaginably potent forces, a discovery that promised to revivify the Empire–and perhaps, one day, even to extend its reach to every quadrant of the galaxy.

Taking a seat in the command chair, Koval silently watched the coruscating energies in the screen’s center for the better part of an hour, while junior officers busied themselves monitoring the banks of equipment. It was their responsibility to assist the energy station’s technical crews in locating and dampening out all local subspace instabilities before irreparable harm could befall either the energy‑extraction equipment or the power source’s delicately balanced containment apparatus.

Koval was unpleasantly aware that the crew had failed to mask allevidence of the phenomenon’s presence; the recent unwelcome intrusion of the first Federation starship into the cloaked zone had amply demonstrated those failures. In the aftermath, an overzealous warbird captain had overstepped his authority by destroying that Federation vessel, forcing Koval to have him summarily executed. Now that the incident had attracted the attention of the Federation’s flagship, Koval would countenance no further errors or unforeseen complications.

A hatchway opened and a distraught young decurion entered the control center, practically at a run. “ Chairman Koval,” he said breathlessly. “We’ve just received a stealth signal from the Chiarosan orbital comm tether. There has been an . . . incident on the planet.”

Koval sighed. Why were so many junior officers averse to speaking plainly these days? “Specificity and brevity are among the cardinal virtues, Takal. Let me have both.”

The younger man paused for a moment, composing his thoughts before continuing. “Somehow, the Starfleet detainees have escaped from the base on Chiaros IV. They’ve taken one of our small scout vessels off‑planet.”

Koval suppressed any outward show of surprise or anger, but he felt them both nonetheless. He quickly reassured himself: Even though the Federation now surely knows of the covert Romulan presence on Chiaros IV, they still have virtually no chance of correctly assessing the Empire’s larger agenda.

By the time they do that, it will be far, far too late.

“What is the status of our people there?” Koval said evenly.

“The Starfleet prisoners evidently overpowered three of our technicians, Chairman, and forced them off the scout ship before using it to make their escape. The technicians were fortunate not to have been taken hostage.”

Koval shook his head. “Not at all. There probably wasn’t enough room on the scout ship to take anyone else aboard. What is the status of the rest of our personnel on the base?”

“There were no casualties, Chairman.”

“Fortunate. Even with a memory scanner, I cannot debrief the dead. The rebel base is compromised, Decurion. Evacuate it at once. Instruct all personnel to withdraw to the secondary compound.”

“Yes, Chairman.”

“As soon as the evacuation is complete, you will purge the facility.”

“It will be done, sir.” The decurion saluted, touching his clenched fist to his chest. He turned swiftly and was gone.

Koval smiled to himself. Any scan of the base’s remains would reveal the blast signatures of Starfleet quantum torpedoes–armaments that the Tal Shiar had acquired through third parties and then hidden beneath the Army of Light complex during its construction long ago. Thus, the Chiarosan electorate would have even further proof of Federation perfidy before voting on the question of Federation membership, just two short days from now.

By that time, Koval expected to have concluded his business with Commander Zweller as well. Zweller had aided the Chiarosan rebels to sway the election in favor of Romulus, just as he had promised to do. And despite Zweller’s subsequent falling out with Grelun, a deal was still a deal. Spies had to be especially circumspect about honoring their under‑the‑table agreements. Or at least they had to appearto be. To do any less was simply bad business, and could invite unpredictable responses from one’s adversaries.

Now that Zweller had escaped from the rebels, Koval fully expected to give the commander his just due: a list of Romulan agents working on Federation worlds. A list of probably‑compromised intelligence officers who would shortly find themselves purged, their families vanished, their lands and properties confiscated. Section 31 would almost certainly execute the spy‑purge themselves, thereby saving Koval and his bureau a great deal of trouble and expense. Quietly lauding himself for his own cleverness, Koval allowed his lips to torque into an–almost–perceptible smile.