Текст книги "Section 31: Rogue "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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V’Riln cast a sour glance at Troi. “I wish we had been advised of your intention to bring a Betazoid to this meeting, Captain. Perhaps we would have furnished a telepath of our own.”

“Surely that would be unnecessary, Mr. V’Riln,” Picard said, deliberately adopting the smile of a magnanimous host. “After all, what do either of us have to hide from each other?”

Troi’s expression told Picard that she could probably spend several hours answering that single question. Batanides, for her part, seemed content to let Picard do all the talking. She sat in silence, watching the Romulans closely.

“Please allow me to come to the heart of the reason for this visit,” T’Alik said.

“I would appreciate that, Ambassador,” Picard said. “We only have one day left before the planetary referendum, so time is fleeting. And I suppose you’ve read the polls.”

T’Alik almost smiled at that. “We are well‑aware of the referendum’s likely outcome. And frankly, I have come to ask you to concede those results sooner rather than later. After all, no purpose can be served by waiting until the bitter end.”

“The writing, as you humans say, is on the wall,” V’Riln said.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Picard said, smiling. He hoped to throw them off‑balance. “It might do my crew some good to leave this dreary region a day or so early.”

“That would be a great relief, Captain,” Troi said, falling in step.

Picard smiled at the counselor, well aware that the relief Troi had just registered was not her own; T’Alik was evidently both surprised and pleased to hear that the Enterprisemight be leaving early.

Perhaps she sees that as a sign that we won’t embarrass her in front of the Chiarosans by unveiling the unauthorized ship we captured.

That was the moment when V’Riln floored him.

“The Tal Shiar has informed us that you still have the scoutship you used to escape from the Army of Light’s Nightside compound,” the Romulan assistant said in a matter‑of‑fact tone.

Picard did his best to hide his surprise. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

T’Alik did not appear fazed in the least by her assistant’s revelation. Picard supposed that their presentation had been well‑rehearsed for maximum emotional impact.

“No, Captain,” the ambassador said with a faint smile. “I don’t suppose that you do. But I must tell you that I am delighted to hear you say it.”

“I’m sure if we wereto discover any unauthorized Romulan vessels on Chiaros IV,” Picard deadpanned, “it would greatly complicate your mission here.”

“Indeed it would,” T’Alik said.

Picard put on his most solicitous expression. “And it would probably place you, personally, in an extremely awkward position.”

“It would force the ambassador to protest the actions of her own government, Captain,” V’Riln said haughtily.

T’Alik began to look ever‑so‑slightly uncomfortable. “In the event of any such discovery, Captain, I would likely have no choice other than to resign my post. As a fellow diplomat, I’m sure you can understand that I cannot be a party to a treaty violation, either official or otherwise.”

Picard smiled broadly. “Madame Ambassador, as a fellow diplomat, I wouldn’t dream of placing you in that position.”

“I’m delighted that we understand each other so well, Captain,” T’Alik said, bowing her head fractionally.

And with that, the Romulan diplomats said their short but polite farewells, then allowed the security officers to escort them out of the ready room.

“Well,” Troi said. “Now we know that theyknow we have the scoutship.”

“Data was right,” Batanides said. “Whatever we decide to do with that ship, I suppose we can forget about having the element of surprise.”

“I’d already accepted that as a given,” Picard said, frowning. “But if there’s a way around that problem, Geordi and Data will find it.”

“For some reason, our continued presence is making the Romulans very nervous,” Troi ventured.

Batanides nodded. “It can only have to do with whatever the Romulans are hiding behind their cloaking field.”

Picard rose from behind his desk and walked over to the viewport. The darkness outside was punctuated by thousands of distant pinpoints of light.

For a long moment, he silently contemplated the loss of three wide, nominally empty sectors of space to the Romulans. He found the notion unacceptable. He suddenly couldn’t stomach the thought of losing anythingto such Machiavellian schemers.

“I quite agree,” Picard said with determination. “This has all gone on long enough. One way or another, we’re going to find out what’s behind that cloak.”

Chapter Twelve

His eyes closed tightly, Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge sagged heavily against the side of the turbolift. “Bridge,” he heard Data say.

Geordi opened his eyes as the car began moving. The android was staring at him, concern evident in his golden eyes. Eyes as artificial as mine,La Forge thought. It struck him as ironic that he could observe his friend’s efforts to become human only by means of a synthetic sensory apparatus. At first glance, the engineer’s ocular implants appeared to be perfectly ordinary, natural human eyes–until a close inspection revealed the intricate filigree of hair‑thin circuit‑patterns etched into their metallic‑blue irises.

“Are you all right, Geordi?”

La Forge smiled weakly. “Never better, Data.”

“I have noticed that, among humans, even the closest of friends will, on occasion, deliberately prevaricate to one another,” Data said evenly. “I believe that your response constitutes what Commander Riker would almost certainly describe as a ‘whopper.’ ”

La Forge nodded, sighed wearily, and massaged his temples. His head felt as though it were being squeezed in a colossal vise. According to Dr. Crusher, his headaches would cease once his nervous system had had a little more time to adjust to its new sensory inputs.

“Guilty, as charged, Data,” La Forge said.

For most of the past two days, he and Data had worked alongside engineers Kehvan and Waltere Zydhek–the hulking brothers from Balduk–poring over the countless gigaquads of data contained in the captured Romulan scoutship’s computer core, seeking two critical command pathways. The first was the electronic portal into whatever Romulan security systems might lay behind the cloaking field; the second was the precise cloaking‑harmonic frequency needed to get a ship insidethat field undetected.

He noticed that Data was still staring at him. “Did Dr. Crusher not caution you that sleep‑deprivation might aggravate the temporary neurological discomfort your new sensory inputs are causing?”

Geordi nodded. “She did, Data. And if she asks me about it, I’ll promise to sleep for an entire month. Afterwe finish our job here.”

As the turbolift sped forward and upward toward the bridge, Geordi considered the ramifications of the problems he and Data had just spent nearly thirty‑six continuous hours trying to solve. Tracking down the correct lines of Romulan code among the quadrillions of irrelevant commands had been no simple undertaking, Data’s prodigious computational power notwithstanding. The solution had remained stubbornly elusive for the first day, despite the endless specialized recursive “search” programs he and Data had devised for the purpose.

Geordi’s first hurdle had been overcoming his astonishment over the tremendous storage capacity of the Romulan scoutship’s computer core, and the extraordinarily complex information that filled it to overflowing. Such inelegant, convoluted programming techniques made no sense from an engineering perspective, and he had said as much to Cortin Zweller during the commander’s brief visit to the shuttlebay.

Maybe you should stop thinking like an engineer,Zweller had said, chuckling as though La Forge’s comment had been unbelievably naive. Instead, why not try looking at it from the perspective of a Romulan Tal Shiar operative?

The very mention of the Tal Shiar made Geordi’s skin crawl. He remembered only too vividly how Romulan agents had manipulated him six years before, nearly turning him into an assassin.

But Zweller’s remark had also given Geordi renewed hope that somewhere in the Romulan vessel’s electronic labyrinth lay a definitive–if subtly hidden–solution to his problem. And sure enough, a few hours after he had put aside his engineer’s tendency to seek out the shortest, simplest solutions, the relevant pieces of code had revealed themselves.

Geordi didn’t notice that the turbolift had halted until its doors opened, interrupting his reverie. He and Data strode out onto the bridge, where the members of alphawatch were at their customary places. Commander Zweller and Admiral Batanides stood in the center of the bridge, their eyes upon the forward viewscreen, which displayed a featureless region of space.

Their attentiveness told La Forge that there must be a great deal more on the screen than met the eye. “What exactly are we looking at?” he asked aloud.

“The sensors have picked up several small subspace ‘hiccups’ over the past few hours,” Riker said. “And every one of these distortions has been localized within that region.”

“Behind the cloaking field,” Zweller added.

Picard regarded La Forge and Data. “Were you able to learn anything new from our first probe’s scans?”

“No, sir,” La Forge said. “Whatever’s at the center of that effect is still invisible. But I believe I can get a second probe across the barrier intact, and bring in some clear images.”

“Make it so,” Picard said, nodding. La Forge and Data immediately busied themselves at the engineering consoles. Data loaded the correct cloaking‑harmonic information into the probe’s isolinear memory buffers while Geordi initiated the device’s remote launching system.

The admiral shook her head, looking defeated. “I’ve really got to wonder how anything we might discover could possibly affect the Romulan takeover of the Geminus Gulf this late in the game.”

“We should have an answer for you momentarily, Admiral,” Data said. “The probe is away.”

“Let’s just hope that the Romulans haven’t changed their cloaking‑field frequencies,” Zweller said.

La Forge’s breath caught in his throat. The notion that all of his hard work might have been for naught was simply too much to contemplate right now.

“I do not believe that will be a problem,” Data told Zweller. “The cloaked area is no doubt maintained by thousands, perhaps hundredsof thousands, of field generators. Adjusting the harmonics of the entire field would require making very precise changes to each component with utterly perfect synchronization. It is highly unlikely that the Romulans could accomplish this without momentarily lowering the cloaking field. So far, we have seen no evidence of this.”

La Forge started breathing again. Thank you, Data. I needed that.

Everyone’s eyes were riveted to the screen’s tactical display as the probe rapidly approached the cloaking field’s invisible perimeter–

–and then vanished into its imperceptible interior.

La Forge felt moistness on the back of his neck. Had this probe been silenced as easily as the last one? The moment of truth had arrived at last. “Any probe signals, Data?” he said.

“Negative,” the android replied.

Damn! The harmonics must have been wrong after all–

“Correction,” said Data. “I am now receiving narrowband subspace telemetry. I do not believe the Romulans will be able to intercept it.”

The engineer grinned broadly. Bingo!

“Put it on the screen,” Picard said.

Lieutenant Hawk’s fingers flew across his console in response. The image on the viewer abruptly changed, and La Forge heard sharp intakes of breath coming from points all over the bridge. A small, six‑sided metallic shape with a hole through its center hung in the void, occupying the precise center of a spherically arranged network of even smaller orbiting platforms. Surrounding this was a second–and far larger–conglomeration of tiny pods of gleaming metal, an outer sphere composed of thousands of individual components, each separated from the next by several kilometers of empty space. Geordi had no doubt that this outermost layer made up the network of cloaking‑field generators, which had kept this gigantic assemblage hidden until now.

“I want a better look at the object at the center,” Picard said. “Maximum magnification, Mr. Hawk.”

The view changed again, and the artifact in question resolved itself into a complicated aggregation of asymmetrical spaceborne structures, clumped together in apparently slapdash fashion into an irregularly hexagonal torus. Geordi and Data exchanged surprised looks after seeing what lay at the object’s open center. It raged at them from within an annular metal structure, which could not have measured more than a kilometer or two in diameter. There, in an extremely compact volume, blazed a primordial inferno–a barely constrained fury so intense that it might have been the cosmic forge in which the universe itself had been made.

“Mon Dieu,”La Forge heard the captain say, apparently to no one in particular.

La Forge, Data, and stellar cartography specialist Ranul Keru stood on the raised central dais of the cavernous, three‑story Stellar Cartography room. Captain Picard and all of the senior officers stood beside the dais, along with Batanides, Zweller, Commander Roget, and Lieutenant Hawk.

Picard gazed briefly at each of the three officers on the dais. “What definitive information can you tell us about the phenomenon out there?” The captain’s voice echoed slightly in the oversize domed chamber.

“Based on our probe’s sensor telemetry,” the engineer said, “the object at the center of those cloaked structures is a subspace singularity.”

“The first one, in fact, ever discovered,” Keru said.

Batanides’s eyebrows rose inquisitively. “Would you explain that a bit for the benefit of those of us who aren’t physicists or engineers, Commander?”

“It’ll be easier if we show you, Admiral,” Keru said as he touched a control surface atop the dais’ wide, swooping handrail. Everyone looked upward as an enormous holographic representation of the turbulent singularity– the roiling fireball at the center of the hexagonal Romulan array–suddenly appeared in midair, filling half of the map room’s arch‑ceilinged display space. As La Forge studied the spectacular image, he felt his fatigue draining away. Pure, adrenaline‑fueled wonder took its place.

“What you are seeing,” Data said, “is the singularity’s event horizon, the boundary past which all infalling matter or energy–in this case, the solar wind from the Chiarosan star–becomes crushed to infinite density at the object’s center. That region is invisible, since even light cannot escape it. The turbulent band of exterior material which you cansee is located on the event horizon’s periphery, where the object’s powerful gravitational field is accelerating it into various forms of lethal hard radiation, such as delta particles and berthold rays.”

La Forge saw Hawk and Keru exchange a worried glance. “How can a network of cloaking devices contain radiation as powerful as that?” Hawk said.

Keru shrugged, prompting La Forge to respond to Hawk’s question. “It can’t. The innermost sections of the Romulan facility seem to be doing that. The cloaking network’s function is to keep the whole thing invisible and subspace‑silent, along with a large volume of the surrounding space.”

“In fact,” Data said, “the entire apparatus may have been here for decades. Sensor telemetry shows that it orbits the Chiarosan star at a mean distance of about 800 million kilometers, about 650 million kilometers farther out, on average, than the orbit of Chiaros IV. Given the turbulent atmosphere on that planet, it is unlikely that the Chiarosans ever would have discovered it on their own.”

“Strange,” Batanides said blandly. “It looks like the event horizon of a typical, garden‑variety black hole to me. Albeit a bit more spectacular.”

“It’s very similar, Admiral, but there’s one critical difference,” La Forge said. “The object’s singularity–that is, its point of infinite compression–lies in subspace instead of in normal space. For the moment, that’s where most of its effects are confined.”

“However,” Data added, “local space–time curvature measurements show that the object’s tremendous gravitational field has been steadily weakening the boundary between normal space and subspace, perhaps for billions of years.”

“And now it finally has the potential to have serious effects on normal space,” Keru added.

Zweller shook his head in apparent disbelief. “If this object has such a strong gravitational field, then why hasn’t it affected the orbits of the planets in this system?”

“Good point,” said the engineer. “My guess is that the object’s gravitational influence is also largely confined to subspace. Along with most of its radiation output.”

“That still doesn’t explain why no Federation ship ever detected it earlier,” said Crusher. “Say, from its subspace radio noise.”

“The singularity’s subspace emissions occur at much higher frequencies than those most starfaring cultures use for communications,” Data explained. “Other normalspace phenomena, such as Chiaros IV’s atmosphere and magnetosphere, generate far more noticeable interference in the communications bands.”

“The Romulans obviously stumbled upon the phenomenon first,” Picard said. “We’ve just come in a distant second.”

“Or maybe third,” Zweller said quietly. “The Slaytongot here before the Enterprisedid.” To La Forge’s broadband visual receptors, the man looked ashen, as though something had just gone radically awry with his cardiovascular system. But other than Counselor Troi–who was also gifted with unusual perceptions–no one else seemed to notice Zweller’s apparent change of mood. Nevertheless, all eyes were now on Zweller, who had lapsed into silence.

It was Commander Roget who finally spoke up. “A couple of months before the Slaytonentered the Geminus Gulf, the Argus Array picked up some unusual subspace distortion waves centered on this system. They were far too infrequent and intermittent to pin down to an exact epicenter.”

“I am familiar with the Argus information,” Data said with enthusiasm. “It is possible that the Romulans must periodically release some of their excess subspace energy into normal space, energy that manifests itself as subspace distortions.”

“That might explain those subspace ‘hiccups’ we’ve been picking up over the past few hours,” Riker said.

“And why the Romulan ambassador seemed so anxious for us to leave the area,” Picard said. “Perhaps she knew that her countrymen were likely to spill some of their excess subspace energy today, and didn’t want us nearby asking questions about it.”

Roget shrugged. “It’s also possible that the Romulans simply can’t control the singularity as well as they think they can. There didn’t seem to be any regular pattern to the distortions, after all. And the Slaytoncouldn’t detect them at all–at least, not before she was destroyed.”

“You think that the Slaytonencountered the phenomenon after your shuttlecraft left for Chiaros IV,” Troi said.

Roget nodded, his expression grim. “And I also think that those Romulan bastards destroyed her for getting too close to their secret energy project.”

La Forge glanced once more at Zweller, noting that he was growing steadily paler in the infrared frequency band.

“The Romulans would certainly be highly motivated to keep this phenomenon under wraps until they’ve formally taken control of the Geminus Gulf,” Picard said.

“And that motivation wouldseem to implicate them in the Slayton’s destruction,” Data said. “They have found what may be the most powerful object ever discovered; as long as they can keep the bulk of the phenomenon’s radiation and gravitational effects ‘bottled’ in subspace, so to speak, they will have access to virtually unlimited quantities of energy.”

“And to think that all these years Starfleet believed that the Geminus Gulf was nothing but an empty desert,” Batanides said, evidently to no one.

“Interestingly,” Data said, “one of twentieth‑century Earth’s most desolate regions also held vast reserves of energy, in the form of petroleum. Wars over this substance were fought in the region known as the Middle East, where–”

“Thank you, Data,” Picard interrupted, his brow wrinkled with concern. “But our primary concern is how to deal with the subspace singularity. First, I need to know if it poses any immediate danger, either to the Enterpriseor to Chiaros IV.”

Data nodded. “That is a distinct possibility, Captain, particularly if the inner containment facility were to suffer a catastrophic failure. The singularity itself appears to generate the very power that the Romulans are using to contain it. However, the malfunction of a critical component of their power grid could allow a great deal of radiation to escape. Far more than either the Enterprise’s shields or the planet’s magnetic field could cope with.”

“Or,” La Forge added, “a containment breach could allow a lot of gravitational energy to escape into normal space. A large enough graviton flux could create havoc in this system.”

“Meaning what?” Picard said.

Keru coughed quietly before speaking. “Meaning that Chiaros IV could be thrown clear out into interstellar space. Or dropped straight into its sun. Or simply ripped to pieces.”

“How could something that powerful have come into existence in the first place?” Troi said.

“No one knows for certain,” Data said as he executed an extraordinarily human‑looking shrug. “It is possible that only the primordial fireball from which all matter and energy originated could have created such a dense concentration of energy and mass.”

“The Big Bang itself,” Picard said, the awe in his voice unrestrained.

Crusher fidgeted. “This all sounds a little too huge to comprehend. What does all of this mean in practical terms?”

“That’s a fair question, Doctor,” La Forge said. “ Theoretically, this subspace singularity has a gravitational potential millions of times more powerful than that of even the most massive black holes. We’ve known for a long time now that Romulan ships are powered by small artificial singularities. If the Romulans manage to harness this thing, it would yield trillions of times more energy than even their largest singularity‑driven warp cores.”

Batanides whistled quietly, obviously impressed. Picard, too, seemed to grasp the implications immediately. Zweller stood in brooding silence, his hands clasped behind his back.

“With a power source like that at their disposal,” Picard said somberly, “the Romulans might be able to manage transwarp drive, like the Borg. Their ships could venture from Romulus to Earth in moments.”

“And that’s only the beginning,” La Forge said. “With that much energy on tap, they could probably build and dismantle stable wormholes at will. They could send their troops anywhere in the galaxy–maybe anywhere in the universe–without even having to bother building ships.They’d make the ancient Iconians look like they were standing still.” He paused while everyone in the room silently pondered the implications.

Finally, Riker ended the silence. “Well, now that we know whythe Romulans want this system so badly, the next question is: What to do about it?”

“Agreed,” said Picard. “Options?” The captain looked quickly at each person in the room. Another uncomfortable hush descended.

This time it was the admiral who broke the spell. “I’m inclined to agree with Commander Roget’s interpretation of this thing,” she said, massaging one of her temples. “The fact that this singularity is still belching fire and subspace distortions every so often tells us one thing loud and clear: The Romulans don’t have complete control over it yet.”

“That may be, Admiral,” La Forge said. “Commander Data, Commander Keru, and I have been wondering all along if the Romulans haven’t bitten off more than they can chew.”

La Forge nodded to Keru, who activated another control on the railing. Instantly, a multilayered graph superimposed itself over the image of the subspace phenomenon, highlighting it with a series of colored bands.

Data spoke again. “The amber‑colored areas show the pattern of gravimetric stresses that the singularity is bringing to bear on normal space. These stress‑patterns seem to indicate that the Romulans are trying to maximize the phenomenon’s energy output by keeping it balanced precisely between normal space and subspace.”

“This is where things get very dicey,” La Forge said. “If they’ve miscalculated the stress‑points between normal space and subspace, then the singularity will rip into our universe directly through these stressed regions. It’ll be like an iron anvil smashing through a rotting wooden floor.”

“And what happens then?” Riker said, his blue eyes wide.

La Forge spread his hands and shrugged. “Worst case scenario? All of normal space gets sucked into subspace.”

“Or perhaps vice versa,” said Data, obviously intrigued with this line of speculation. “In fact, it is possible that all of space and subspace would be drawn intothe singularity, precipitating a repeat of the Big Bang explosion itself. Such a phenomenon might even subsequently create an entirely new universe.”

“After blowing this one to quarks first,” Riker said dryly.

The admiral spoke up, getting everyone’s attention. “Just before the first atomic bombs were tested on Earth back in the twentieth century, nobody was sure what the outcome would be. Some physicists worried that they might burn up every last oxygen molecule in the atmosphere in a single colossal, unstoppable firestorm. But they went ahead and detonated the first bomb anyway. The worst didn’t happen. Luckily.”

She looked gravely at every person standing in the cathedral‑like room before continuing. “This time, we can’t afford to be quite so . . . callous. Or allow the Romulansto be.”

Picard stood by quietly as the singularity’s image blazed overhead, eerily quiet. No one spoke for perhaps an entire minute as the captain ruminated, his expression unfathomable as he stared at the representation of the singularity. Finally, he looked away and regarded each and every face in the room once again, settling at last on La Forge and Data, who still stood on the dais beside Keru.

“If the Romulans were smart enough to beat us to discovering and harnessing this thing,” Picard said, “then surely they’ve also anticipated the risks. They must have a plan to abort what they’re doing. Some means of jettisoning the singularity permanently into subspace.”

“That would be a rational contingency plan, Captain,” Data said. “A successful abort, however, would involve causing a deliberate and extremely precise collapse of the Romulans’ containment forcefields, while simultaneously sealing the breach between subspace and normal space. There would be no margin for error.”

“If we could neutralize this new Romulan toy,” Batanides said, “then losing the Geminus Gulf to them would be an acceptable price to pay.”

“And it would also remove the Romulans’ entire reason for coming here in the first place,” Riker said, smiling slightly at the irony.

“Mr. Keru, please deactivate the image,” Picard said, signaling that he had come to a decision. Keru touched a button and the singularity abruptly vanished.

Once again, the captain spoke toward the dais. “Mr. La Forge, Mr. Data, in just under four hours, the Chiarosan referendum will officially conclude. I expect that we won’t be able to remain in this system for very long after that without seriously provoking the Romulans.”

La Forge smiled. “Data and I already have a plan that we think we can pull off before the electoral deadline.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Picard said, a slow smile crossing his face. “What will you need?”

“The Romulan scoutship, Mr. Data, a good pilot, and a couple of hours of preparation time. That singularity ought to be back where it came from permanently by the time we get booted out of here.”

“Hold it,” Batanides said sharply. “You can’t be planning to fly that scoutship into the lion’s den, Mr. La Forge. The lion already has a pretty good idea that we’re coming.”

“Fortunately,” Data said, “the element of surprise will be entirely irrelevant to our plan. We will need only to stay within the cloaking field long enough to establish a link between the Romulan security network and my own neural nets.”

“With a little luck, the scoutship will be halfway back to the Enterprisebefore the Romulans even know what hit them,” La Forge said.

Zweller was wearing a sour expression. “So that’syour solution? Destroythe most potent source of power ever discovered?”

“I’m not thrilled about it, Commander,” said the engineer. “But it seems like a better idea than giving the Romulans a chance to use it against us.”

“Why are you so sure your plan is going to work, Commander La Forge?” Batanides said, sounding skeptical.

The engineer placed an arm about Data’s shoulders, momentarily surprising him. “Because, Admiral, even the smartest Romulan can’t think nearly as fast as the Enterprise’s second officer.”

Data looked embarrassed. “Why . . . thank you, Geordi.”

Picard smiled. “Then make it so, Mr. La Forge, Mr. Data. Mr. Hawk, I’d like to have you aboard that scoutship as well.”

La Forge noticed a slight scowl forming on Keru’s face, though the stellar cartographer said nothing. Hawk beamed, apparently not noticing Keru’s reaction. “ Captain, I’d be happy to volunteer. I’m looking forward to having a go at that scoutship’s cockpit.”

Picard dismissed his officers, and La Forge and Data were the first to leave the room, nearly at a run. With yet another inscrutable riddle before him, the engineer felt fairly abuzz with excitement. Sleep is overrated anyway,he thought, his agile mind already setting up several new equations as he entered the turbolift alongside his android friend.

The knowledge that the Romulans were now poised to take over–or perhaps even annihilate–the universe settled uneasily in Cortin Zweller’s gut. Compared to the singularity, Koval’s list of Romulan spies now seemed impossibly trivial.

Zweller now had to accept the bitter truth that he– and Section 31–had been duped. Taken in by a master deceiver, to be sure. But fooled nonetheless.