Текст книги "Taking Wing "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“All loyal Romulans should rally around our new praetor, particularly when the Empire is in jeopardy. Should we not?”

Pardek sniffed, allowing the other men a glimpse of the political outrage he usually kept tightly wrapped, except perhaps in Tal’Aura’s presence. “The legitimacy of Tal’Aura’s praetorship is still open to debate, Director. In fact, I find her automatic inclusion in today’s Federation-mediated talks to be highly questionable. Prior to the assassinations of Praetor Hiren and the Senate, Tal’Aura was merely yet another senator. Her claim to the praetorship is therefore no better than that of any othersenator.”

“Except that she isalive, whereas almost all of those other senators are not, including the entire Continuing Committee. That fact alone gives Tal’Aura a decided advantage over her erstwhile peers, I should think.”

Pardek tried to ignore Rehaek’s smirk. “Regardless, I am surprised to see that you’ve embraced Tal’Aura’s claim to the praetorship—especially before the debate over its very legitimacy has even truly begun.”

“I see,” Rehaek said, a look of inexplicable sadness crossing his sharp features. “But one of the essential functions of the Tal Shiar is to prevent such debates from becoming dangerous distractions from our Empire’s larger objectives. Therefore such debates must sometimes be settled preemptively.”

Pardek noticed only then that no uhlans were visible from the alcove in which he and the two spies stood. That was strange indeed; ever since Shinzon’s attack on the Senate, it had seemed that not a single square dhat’drihof downtown Ki Baratan was left unguarded by the praetor’s uhlans.

A violent shiver slowly climbed the rungs of Pardek’s spine. The former senator took an instinctive step backward.

“Do it now, Torath,” the spymaster said quietly, sounding weary and far older than his years.

Pardek turned, tried to run, but the man called Torath was faster, stronger, and perhaps an entire century younger. A slightly curved length of gleaming metal appeared in the younger man’s hand as though conjured by a sorcerer out of Romulan myth. Before Pardek could raise his arms to defend himself, Torath had inscribed a deep horizontal furrow across the older man’s throat.

His legs suddenly too weak to support his weight, Pardek tumbled to his knees, then sprawled onto his side on the alcove’s gleaming floor.

His vision quickly turning green-tinged and hazy, Pardek watched with a peculiar sense of detachment as Rehaek approached, then crouched beside him. “The humans your faction plots against would describe you as a ‘hawk,’ Senator. Rather like the late, unlamented Shinzon. But the time for reflexive aggression has passed. It represents an unacceptable variable. That makes the future impermissibly chaotic, and thus far more difficult to predict than it needs to be.”

You don’t care about the future,Pardek thought. You only care about power. Just like Koval.He tried to speak the words aloud, but succeeded only in making moist gurgling noises.

Rehaek adopted a curiously beneficent-looking smile. “Therefore I need to send the other members of your faction a very clear and unambiguous message. Youwill be that message, Senator.”

Pardek knew with utter certainty that he was mortally wounded. He felt his blood flowing in a hot, emerald torrent from the gash across his neck, rapidly cooling as it pooled on the floor all around him. He looked directly up at his killers through rheumy, dimming eyes.

“That was untidy, Torath, but necessary,” he heard Rehaek say to his associate. “Have the senator’s body transported back to his own office. His like-minded associates are sure to find it quickly there.”

“Immediately, sir,” said Torath, who then spoke a few terse commands into the communications device that was evidently hidden in his lapel.

Darkness enfolded Pardek at the same time the transporter beam came. Though he knew it wasn’t a rescue, he still rejoiced at its cold embrace.

For he would soon walk the Halls of Erebus, where his wife and daughter were surely awaiting his arrival.

Chapter Twelve

U.S.S. TITAN

Christine Vale arrived on the bridge for her shift early, as was her habit. The extra time gave her a chance to be fully briefed by the gamma shift bridge commander, who, in this case, was Lieutenant Commander Fo Hachesa, a Kobliad with an infectiously pleasant personality—as well as a sometimes offputting propensity either to drop suffixes from gerunds and adverbs, or to add superfluous ones.

“Not much to report, Commander,” Hachesa said. “Perhaps their heavy drink has render them unable to bother us.”

Vale gave him a slight smile, remembering the meal aboard the Vaj.She saw some of the other bridge crew members grinning at his statement as well, indicating that scuttlebutt about Khegh and his crew must already have traveled far and wide throughout the ship.

“We have also receiving a request from Commander Donatra that the captain contacting her at 0900,” Hachesa said. “It wasn’t appearing urgent, merely a query into the details of our delivering of aid supplies. But you know how hard it is to judging these shifty Romulans.”

That’stwo racist slurs he’s made in one minute,Vale thought. While she hated to call such an otherwise competent and eager young officer on the carpet, she couldn’t allow such behavior to continue. She debated whether to speak to him about it now versus waiting until after she’d consulted either Captain Riker or Commander Troi about the problem.

“Other than that, Lieutenant Rager said she needed to visiting sickbay, so I’ve asked Chief Bolaji to take over ops until she returning to duty.” Hachesa handed her a padd. “That’s all, Commander. Have an enjoy shift.”

Vale made a quick decision. “Hold on just a moment, Fo. May I see you in the ready room, please?”

He looked puzzled. “Certain.”

They stepped into the captain’s empty ready room, the doors sliding closed behind them. Despite the fact that she was specifically authorized to use the room when she had control of the bridge, this was the first time she had been in the room without Riker. She immediately felt uncomfortable. But rather than appear indecisive– and Ido have the right to be in here,she reminded herself—she decided to just sit on the edge of the desk instead of in the large chair behind it.

She looked Hachesa squarely in the eyes. “Commander, I noticed that you made two references that were denigrating to other species just now. First the Klingons, then the Romulans.”

He looked wounded. “I didn’t meaning anything negative by it, sir. I was just try to be humorous.”

“I realize that,” Vale said, “but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable. When you are in command of the bridge, especiallyin the absence of any immediate provocation, species-related slurs set a bad example for the crew. It would be one thing if a drunken Klingon had just hailed us, but to cast all Klingons as drunkards undermines the trust this crew needs to have in them during this mission. The same with the Romulans. We’re in their space, and Donatra represents one of our few allies here. We need to be supportive of her.”

“I understanding, Commander,” Hachesa said, though his eyes narrowed a bit, giving him a defiant, sullen aspect.

Vale wasn’t certain that he didunderstand, but pressing the point further seemed futile. If interspecies amity was indeed a big part of Titan’s ongoing mission, she knew she had to lead by example. With a tolerant smile, she said, “Good. I don’t expect it will be an issue any longer, then. Thank you, Commander.”

“Am I dismiss?”

“Yes. Go get some sack time or some grub.”

“Yes, sir.” Hachesa spun on his heels and stepped toward the door.

Vale watched him leave. He needs to learn to handle criticism a bit better, too,she thought. Otherwise he’s not going to do well on the command track, no matter how many other crew members actually seem to enjoy his kidding around.Again she considered making Troi aware of the situation.

Stepping through the ready room doorway and back onto the bridge, Vale saw that the gamma-to-alpha shift change was under way, though there were still several minutes left until the gamma shift officially ended.

She approached Science Officer Jaza, who was working at his station on the bridge’s starboard side.

“How goes the deployment of the new sensor nets, Mister Jaza?” she asked. Although Titan’s current mission was one of interstellar diplomacy, there was no reason the science staff had to sit on its hands. Romulan space was filled with objects and phenomena about which Starfleet wanted to gather information.

“Most of the work was done by Ensign Ichi on the gamma shift,” he said, “though it appears that K’chak’!’op was an invaluable aid as well.” Jaza pronounced the name crisply as “Chaka.”

“K’chak’!’op was onthe bridge?” Vale asked in wonder. The Pak’shree computer specialist so rarely left her quarters.

“No,” Jaza said with a smile. “She worked from her den, as usual. I truly think she feels a lot less clumsy there, without us bipedal humanoid types around to distract her.”

“So, what do the new sensors tell us?”

On Riker’s orders, Vale had tasked the crew with deploying a series of wide-band, high-resolution sensor nets, specially calibrated to detect cloaked Romulan ships as well as other dangers. While these instruments couldn’t locate or track such ships directly, they could, at least in theory, detect anomalies such as the moving “blank spaces” created by their warp fields, or the telltale gravitons that leaked from even the most heavily shielded cloaking systems.

Unfortunately, the energy required to sustain such a heightened state of sensor acuity placed significant demands on Titan’s power output, effectively compromising her shields and weaponry. Another reason to be thankful for Klingon escorts,Vale thought. Though the idea of lowering Titan’s defenses while moving ever deeper into Romulan space didn’t sit well with her, she had to agree that the security trade-off Captain Riker had made was a wise one, under the circumstances; Titanwould spot any approaching dangers, advise the Klingons, and then let them do what they did best, should the need arise.

Vale knew that Dr. Ra-Havreii, Titan’s designer, was even now working with Lieutenant Commander Ledrah and several members of her crack engineering staff on reducing the sensor net’s energy cost, though they had failed to tumble onto any significant breakthroughs since Titanhad left Utopia Planitia. Still, as far as she knew, Titanwas the only Starfleet vessel currently using this experimental technology.

Jaza interrupted her thoughts, pointing out several multicolored graphics that were scrolling by on the wall-mounted monitor screen. “So far, we haven’t detected any ships other than those of our convoy. We’re mostly encountering dust, rock, and ice particles, ranging from microscopic to about the size of your head. Nothing much different than the flotsam that appears in the Denorios Belt whenever the Celestial Temple burps.”

Jaza’s casual reference to the home of his people’s alleged gods reminded Vale momentarily that he was one of the Bajoran faithful. Not that it wasn’t obvious—he did wear the traditional Bajoran earring on his right ear—but she wasn’t particularly religious herself, so she tended not to dwell on such things.

“Only this flotsam is a little less, um, sacred,” Vale teased.

Jaza shrugged. “Flotsam is flotsam. It’s no different when the Prophets sweep it out of the Temple than it is when it’s carried off of an asteroid by the stellar winds. Are the contents of the trash cans in human churches, mosques, or temples touched by some Terran or Izarian deity?”

“I’ve never had much time for gods or goddesses myself,” Vale said. She wasn’t certain why she was admitting this right on the bridge. But Jaza’s serene presence made her feel utterly at ease.

“Understandable,” he said, nodding. “Many who work in the sciences feel similarly.” He placed his hands upon his heart. “I try instead to integrate my faith in science with my faith in the Prophets. Truth is truth, whether spiritual or scientific. As long as I seek truth in either sphere, I will continue to grow and evolve, as does the universe itself.”

Vale smiled, touched by his sincerity. How very Zen he is,she thought. Not to mention attractive and single.Perhaps when they weren’t preoccupied with an urgent mission she could arrange to spend some time with him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone on a date.

She forced the thought aside. Jaza wasn’t just a colleague—he was a subordinate. Dating him would therefore be absolutely inappropriate.

As inappropriate as marrying him?asked a peevish voice in the back of her head—the same voice that had raised her initial objections to Captain Riker’s decision to make his wife a member of his senior staff.

She noticed then that Jaza was staring at her curiously. Had he been having any of the same thoughts?

Before the awkwardly silent moment could stretch further, the computer let out a staccato series of beeps. New blocks of text and graphics began scrolling in columns onto Jaza’s monitor.

“Hmm, this is odd,” he said, frowning as he studied the emerging data. “Our long-range scans are picking up some kind of spatial anomaly. It appears to be located inside Romulan space only a few hours away from Romulus itself at high warp.”

“What kind of spatial anomaly?” Vale asked, resisting the urge to immediately tap the combadge on her chest and call the captain to the bridge. It was the kind of move she would have made without hesitation while serving as security chief aboard the Enterprise.But she was in command in Riker’s absence, and he was probably on his way up to check in with the newly arrived alpha shift anyhow.

“Readings are all over the place right now,” Jaza said. “I’m picking up spatial and gravimetric distortions. Also intermittent signatures of duranium, tritanium, and polyduranium.”

Vale tensed. “Hull metals. Ship debris?”

“Possibly.” Jaza shrugged. “There’s too much spatial distortion right now for me to say for certain. I’ll try to boost the sensor net’s resolution further, but I’m not sure how much more I’ll be able to squeeze out of it. It’s too bad the anomaly doesn’t lie directly along our present heading.” He resumed working over his console, intent on his stream of scrolling data. On Jaza’s monitor, a false-color image of the anomaly began to take shape between the columns of numbers. It was an irregularly shaped green-and-orange cloud that reminded her of an angry lobster.

“Keep me apprised,” Vale said. Something about the anomaly’s appearance nudged at the back of her mind, giving her a vague feeling of unease.

Spatial anomalies and starships never seem to be a good mix,she thought, considering the hull metals Jaza had detected. She found she was unable to think of any pleasant, happy ways they might have gotten there.

Leaving Jaza to his work, Vale stepped down from the science station and took a seat in the command chair. Her eyes trained on the wide forward viewscreen, she studied the void that lay between Titanand Romulus, grateful for the sight of its countless—and mercifully nonanomalous—stars.

“I’m certain he didn’t mean anything by it, Will,” Troi said in a hushed tone. She was nearly overwhelmed by his intense feelings of frustration.

“I wish I could believe that, Deanna,” Will said just as quietly, his brows rising like thunderheads as he walked alongside her down the corridor. “But he’s been critiquing my command style since the moment he came aboard.”

Troi put her hand up to his arm, stopping him. “No, Will,” she said once she was satisfied that they were alone in the curved passage. “I’m certainhe didn’t mean anything by it. You have to grant that I can read into these things a bit more reliably than you can.”

She could hardly wait for this element of their first mission to be over with. This morning, uninvited, Admiral Akaar—all spit-and-polish, as usual—had joined them for breakfast in the mess hall. His unsolicited criticism of Titan’soff-duty casual clothing policy had rankled Will, leading to their hasty departure after the meal.

Troi lowered her voice. “Look, Will, I’m not wild about his presence here either, and neither is Christine. And I know how he feels about your placing me in your command crew. But until the conclusion of this mission– yourmission—you need to ignore his slights and to focus. It’s not worth the frustration to dwell on this.”

Will let out a long breath through his nose, his puffed-up chest and shoulders deflating a bit. His expression softened as well, and he appeared to be about to say something when an odd gurgling noise came from the doorway just ahead of them down the corridor.

The door slid open, and the gurgle became louder as Ensign Aili Lavena stepped out, drops of water from her boots spattering the carpet in the corridor. She was attired in her modified uniform, which included the hooded hydration suit that kept her skin from drying out in Titan’s standard M-class environment areas. The door to her quarters closed behind her, once again muffling the aqueous background noises coming from within.

Lavena looked down the corridor and saw Will and Troi standing there. “Good morning, Captain. Counselor.” Her voice sounded slightly muted behind the transparent rebreather mask that loosely covered her face. A small cloud of vapor rose around its edges as she spoke. “I hope the waterlock system didn’t startle you. Some of the landlubbers seem to find it a little disturbing.”

Troi recalled having seen the engineers making the retrofits that had enabled the Selkie conn officer to enter and exit her nonstandard-environment quarters. But neither she nor Will had actually heard Lavena’s customized ingress/egress system in operation before. It certainly stood to reason that the tons of Pacifican seawater the system had to restrain wouldn’t be completely unobtrusive. It sounded disconcertingly like the flushing of a humanoid commode.

“Not at all,” the captain said. “We were just having…” He paused momentarily, and Troi noticed a peculiar if fleeting emotional undercurrent that almost broke the surface before vanishing utterly.

“We were just having a conversation,” he said, his composure once again rock solid.

“Very good, sir,” Lavena said, her head cocked to one side. “I’ll see you both on the bridge.” As the ensign turned and walked away, Troi glimpsed a transitory emotional highlight coming from her as well.

Though short-lived, it was not unlike the one Will had just quashed.

Will began walking forward again, but Troi placed a hand on his arm, holding him in place. Once Lavena had rounded a bend in the corridor, she turned him toward her.

“What was thatabout?” she said, keeping her voice low even though no one else was within earshot.

He surprised her by actually blushing slightly. “Leave it alone, Deanna. It’s nothing.”

She smiled, her eyes narrowing involuntarily. “It’s notnothing. I felt something coming from both of you.” The sentiment she had barely glimpsed in them both was finally beginning to make sense to her. “It was almost… carnal,for lack of a better word.”

“Deanna,” Will said, his voice deepening, imploring. He was clearly becoming intensely uncomfortable.

No wonder Pacifica was always such a popular shore-leave destination for dashing, unattached young Starfleet officers,she thought. Grinning, she slugged her husband playfully on the shoulder. “You dog!You and Lavena on Pacifica?”

Will resumed moving forward down the corridor, his blush intensifying and spreading to his ears. “It was a long time ago, Deanna,” he said in a near-whisper. “Just once, and right out of the Academy. And I only just nowrecognized her.”

She hurried to catch up with him, savoring the all-too-rare discomfiture her otherwise easygoing husband was displaying. “Ah, so now there are twopeople in your bridge crew you’ve been intimate with. I wonder what the admiral would think about that?”

Will shot her a withering glance, but said nothing else aloud. I’m embarrassed enough about this,Imzadi ,she felt him say through the empathic bond they shared. Leave it alone, Deanna. Please.His chagrin burned in her mind as brightly as a sodium flare.

Arriving with him at the turbolift, Troi struggled to stifle the fit of giggles that had arrived unbidden. They stepped aboard, and as the doors closed, the empathic bond they shared delivered her an actual concrete image; it was a crystal-clear shard of memory.

It surprised her, but somehow failed to shock her. After all, she knew he’d occasionally been something of a “wolf” very early in his Starfleet career. But because their level of mutual trust and sharing had been so deep and intimate for so long, she simply couldn’t justify holding a more than twenty-year-old incident against him.

It happened before we even knew each other,she thought. And he must not have given Lavena a second thought after he and I met during his assignment to Betazed.

But that didn’t mean she found his charming emotional roil any less enjoyable.

Riker hoped that his flushed face wouldn’t be noticeable as the turbolift doors opened and he stepped onto the bridge. Despite his request, he knew Deanna wouldn’t let his decades-old liaison with Lavena stay buried completely. Her job revolved around talking, and she would certainly want to talk with him further about this. On top of that, she seemed to love to tease him, and often wouldn’t let go of embarrassing facts for years, if ever. At least he could count on her professionalism and public discretion as his diplomatic officer and chief counselor, not to mention as his spouse.

Fortunately, he already knew from experience that she wasn’t unduly bothered by his bygone romantic entanglements. One couldn’t easily keep such old episodes hidden from her Betazoid empathy anyway, and he was grateful that she had the good sense not to be scandalized by them. She had, after all, been raised by the unabashedly free-spirited Lwaxana Troi; Deanna therefore demonstrated very few sexual inhibitions.

At least that had been so until recently, he reflected glumly. Ever since the psychic assault that Shinzon, through his viceroy, had committed against Deanna while she and Riker had been making love nearly two months ago, she had become far more sensitive and introspective than usual in the bedroom. Even their honeymoon had been haunted by the specter of Shinzon’s violation, and Riker sensed that she still had some healing left to do even now.

As Vale stepped toward him and handed him a padd, Riker re-focused his thoughts on the business of running Titan.Taking his place in the command chair, he scanned the reports on the padd and listened as his exec told him about Donatra’s cargo information request and a number of other matters that would demand his attention during his final duty shift prior to Titan’s arrival at Romulus.

“Captain, Commander, I have some additional readings from the anomaly we’ve been observing,” Jaza said, calling over to Riker and Vale from the main science station.

“Put it on the screen, please, Lieutenant,” Riker said.

The forward viewscreen’s default image of warp field–distorted stars was replaced by a long-range view of another, more static, starfield. The image was of lower-than-usual resolution, but glowing, crackling, gracefully tapered and braided ribbons of energy were clearly visible despite the somewhat grainy quality of the picture. Text and numbers scrolled at the bottom of the screen, fed directly to the viewer from the Bajoran science officer’s console.

“It’s producing some truly powerful spatial and sub-spatial distortions, as well as a great deal of gravimetric shear at its event horizon, Captain,” Jaza said.

“Does it pose any danger to the convoy?” Riker asked, though he knew Vale would have advised him were there any real cause for concern.

“Negative, sir. Our current heading won’t take us close enough to it to cause us any problems. But thanks to some pretty exotic chemistry in the debris cloud surrounding the anomaly, it’ll probably give us some fairly spectacular fireworks displays.”

Riker nodded. The shifting bands of colors and lightning-like discharges reminded him of the thunderstorms and auroral displays he used to see in the skies over Valdez, Alaska, during his childhood.

“What sort of ‘exotic chemistry’ have you found, Mr. Jaza?” Riker asked.

“Heavy transuranic elements and alloys that probably couldn’t have occurred here naturally. Duranium, polyferranide, polyduranium.”

“Materials used in building starship hulls and engine components,” Vale said.

“Exactly,” said Jaza. “And I’ve also detected traces of cobalt, molybdenum, tripolymers, highly ionized cortenide, and something that strongly resembles polyalloy.”

Riker recognized several of the chemical compounds Jaza had listed. And he knew of only one source from which they all might have come. Something very cold slowly ascended his vertebrae.

“It’s amazing,” Jaza continued. “I only wish I had a chance to take our new sensor nets a lot closer to this thing.”

“Maybe you will, Jaza,” Vale said, “on the way back to Federation space.”

On the way back to Federation space,Riker thought. Of course.

“I certainly hope so, Commander,” Jaza said to Vale. “This thing’s almost as mysterious as the Celestial Temple. I haven’t been able to find any previous record of this specific anomaly anywhere. Even Lieutenant Pazlar’s stellar cartog section is stumped. It’s apparently a spatial rift of some sort. And it has a background thalaron radiation signature that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”

Thalaron,he thought, closing his eyes momentarily as he considered how close Earth had come to being flensed of all life by this lethal form of radiation, which had been harnessed by the mad usurper Shinzon.

Opening his eyes again, Riker slowly swiveled in his chair and took a long, slow look around his bridge. He saw looks of sad recognition on Deanna’s face, as well as on those of Ranul Keru and Christine Vale. Although Vale had not been aboard the Enterpriseduring the battle against Shinzon, Riker knew that she had made herself almost obsessively familiar with everything that had occurred on that fateful day. Only Lieutenants Jaza and Rager seemed oblivious to the subdued feelings of everyone else.

Of course. Neither of them were part of the crew of theEnterprise that day.

“The reason this anomaly hasn’t been charted yet, Mr. Jaza, is because it wasn’t even here until a few weeks ago. You’re looking at the remnants of the late Praetor Shinzon’s illegal thalaron weapon.”

And the echoes of the explosion that took Data from us forever.

Jaza bowed his head momentarily in apparent prayer. Riker thought the Bajoran must have just realized that he had been observing a graveyard. He wondered which losses of his own Jaza was now contemplating.

Riker resumed studying the phenomenon on the screen. His eyes moist, he bade his dear, dead friend Data a silent farewell. Though his longtime shipmate had been vaporized rather than buried, he now had a permanent monument of sorts.

Deanna, her eyes also bright with unshed tears, silently reached out and squeezed Riker’s hand.

He hoped that neither Titannor her escort convoy would suffer any similar losses before this mission was finished.