Текст книги "Taking Wing "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

SOMEWHERE DEEP IN ROMULAN SPACE

Space itself twisted into gigantic shimmering whorls and glowing iridescent loops before Commander Donatra’s fascinated eyes. What she saw was a thing of both beauty and power. A monument to the heroism of many.

And to the overweening ambition of one.

The Great Bloom. Here is where the thalaron explosion finally rid us of Shinzon,she thought , along with his plans to spread still more death and destruction across the galaxy.

Surveying the bridge of the warbird Valdore,she watched her crew as they busied themselves scanning and monitoring the phenomenon displayed on the viewer. Turning back toward the Great Bloom’s spectacular image, she reflected that this region of space had nearly become a cemetery for her own ship and crew, as well as for Shinzon. How many noble Romulan soldiers, as well as subordinates of Captain Picard, had died in the battle to stop the upstart praetor’s dishonorable rampage?

Now, many weeks after a truly dreadful weapon had been turned back upon its wielder, the site of Shinzon’s denouement still blazed furiously. Commander Suran had recently confided to her that he regarded the Great Bloom as a cosmic warning about the deadly consequences of wielding power unwisely—and of choosing allies poorly. It was obvious now to Donatra that she and Suran had chosen poorly indeed when they’d made their initial alliance with Shinzon and his Reman faction.

Just as Tal’Aura chose poorly,she thought, when she threw in with Shinzon.She remained convinced that Tal’Aura could never have assumed the praetorship without first conspiring to enable Shinzon to eliminate Praetor Hiren and every important member of the Romulan Senate save herself.

Donatra continued staring into the ever-shifting recesses of the great tear in the spatial fabric known as the Great Bloom. She couldn’t bring herself to disagree with Suran’s assessment of the thing’s significance. But she preferred to see another dimension to it as well: it was also a testament to the sacrifices that both Romulan and Federation nationals even now stood ready to make for the ever-elusive cause of peace.

Perhaps it is also a monument to redemption.Donatra wondered if she would ever expiate the guilt she still felt for having once supported the man who had slain every member of the Romulan Senate except for the one who now called herself the Empire’s praetor.

It is indeed a hopeful sign that we have found a constructive use for this remnant of Shinzon’s folly,Donatra thought, watching in silence as orderly patterns of dots carefully arranged themselves at strategic positions between the glowing loops of thalaron-tortured space-time. She sincerely hoped that taking advantage of the phenomenon’s newfound utility would give additional meaning to the lives of all the soldiers and senators whom Shinzon’s horrible weapon had slain.

Each of the more than two dozen tiny shapes on the viewer’s tactical display represented a D’deridex-class or Mogai-class warbird, every one of them equipped with armaments, shields, and engines comparable to those of their flagship, the battle-scarred Valdore.Those potent armaments included not only scores of disruptor banks and hundreds of photon torpedoes, but also large complements of small but lethal attack fliers.

Every one of these vessels had already been officially written off as seized or destroyed during the brief Reman uprisings that had flared up immediately after Shinzon’s assassination of the Senate. If the commanders and crews of these vessels took care to maintain their distance from the spatially-riven event horizon that lay close to the center of the Great Bloom’s expanse, those ships would find a safe and discreet port here, remaining undetectable from any appreciable distance. The space-time distortions caused by the Great Bloom’s intense gravitational lensing effects would see to that. Now our “ghost fleet” but awaits either my or Suran’s command to pounce upon whoever prevails in the struggle for civilian power, be it Tal’Aura, Pardek, political moderates, or even those vile, cave-dwellinguaefv’digae from Remus.

The aft turbolift door hissed open. Out of the corner of her eye, Donatra saw Commander Suran enter at a breathless near-run. “We need to speak, Commander. Privately.”

Donatra suppressed a harried sigh. She wondered how many more times she would have to soothe Suran’s misgivings about hiding so many ships within the Bloom’s energetic shadow. He had objected from the beginning that the Bloom, as good a hiding place as it was, lay too far away from Romulus to allow for a sufficiently fast deployment should the need to do so arise unexpectedly. But he had never presented a better alternative. Although Suran was ostensibly on her side in the Empire’s ongoing power struggles, there were times when she wished she could simply pull rank on him rather than having to explain and persuade. But even if Icould just order him about, what assurance do I have that he would do as I command?

Then she saw the look of real concern in his eyes, which blazed with a sincerity she hadn’t seen since Tal’Aura had engineered Admiral Braeg’s death. Though she respected Suran’s tactical prowess, she didn’t credit him with enough artifice to counterfeit such passion. Whatever was on Suran’s mind now, it was clearly nothing trivial.

“Of course,” Donatra said, keeping her voice even as she gestured toward the bridge’s starboard side.

“It’s about former Senator Pardek,” Suran said as soon as the plain gray duranium door had slid shut behind them, ensuring their privacy. “He’s just been found dead.”

She dropped heavily into the chair behind her desk, and gestured toward the empty seat in front of it. “I assume he didn’t die peacefully in his sleep.”

“Not unless he enjoyed taking his rest with something very sharp on his pillow,” Suran said as he took the offered seat. “His own people found him in his office with his throat slashed. My sources indicate that the deed was apparently done within the last half verakor so.”

The news of Pardek’s murder brought Donatra up short, though it didn’t truly surprise her. Deaths by misadventure hadn’t exactly been uncommon in and around the Empire’s centers of power, even before Shinzon’s elimination of the Senate. Discreet assassinations of political adversaries had become almost routine under Praetor Dralath many years earlier. She had read accounts of Dralath himself slashing the throat of a dissenting senator—a murder committed in the Council Chamber, right before the startled eyes of the victim’s legislative colleagues.

But a slashed throat hardly seems like Tal’Aura’s style,she thought. And Romulan praetors, aside from the bloodthirsty Dralath, usually demurred from such naked violence. They tended to favor instead convenient happenstances such as hovercar crashes, sudden acute “illnesses,” and other similarly improbable—though plausibly deniable—mishaps.

Still, she knew that Tal’Aura’s culpability in Braeg’s death was undeniable. The late admiral had not only been Donatra’s beloved, he had also been Tal’Aura’s chief rival for the praetorship of the Romulan Empire. Thoughts of Tal’Aura’s foul act of treachery revived the dull pain that had never entirely departed from her right leg and the entire right side of her torso. Though the superficial plasma burns she had suffered on the day of Braeg’s death were within Dr. Venora’s capacity to heal completely, Donatra had decided to leave the scars intact; they remained as tangible reminders both of her enduring love for Braeg and of her abiding hatred for Tal’Aura.

Donatra hoped that the nagging aches of her wounds would ensure that she never again risked showing her back to the Empire’s newest self-appointed praetor. Her side tingled uncomfortably as she wondered if Tal’Aura had seen Pardek as yet another dangerous rival for power. Like Braeg, who might well have ascended to the praetorship himself but for Tal’Aura’s perfidy.

“Do you see the praetor’s hand in Pardek’s murder, Suran?” Donatra asked.

“It is certainly possible. Tal’Aura may see genuine danger behind the rhetoric of Pardek’s faction. His confederates Durjik and Tebok have made no secret of their desire to make war on the Federation.”

A desire that you, my ally of convenience, once shared not only with Pardek, but also with Shinzon.Did Suran now truly see his erstwhile association with Shinzon as a blunder, as she did? Not for the first time, Donatra wondered whether Suran’s current alliance with her was motivated by his decades of loyalty to the slain Admiral Braeg—and therefore at least partly from their shared hatred of Tal’Aura, Braeg’s killer—or if it was merely a marriage of expediency. Could she really afford to trust Suran any more than she could Tal’Aura?

But can I really afford not to?

“Pardek’s group has been rattling its tarnished Honor Blades for another war against the Federation for some time now,” Suran continued. “I’m sure that even Tal’Aura would agree that the Empire can ill afford such a conflict, especially now. But I seriously doubt that even she would have resorted to such a crude means of assassination.”

“It cannot be the Remans,” Donatra said, stroking her chin. “Their involvement would imply knowledge of the impending power-sharing meeting—the one from which we have all agreed to exclude them. Were they aware of the initial secret conference, they surely would have made a great deal more trouble than slaying a single retired Romulan senator.”

“Thank Erebus for small mercies.” He sighed, obviously resigned to the identity of the only other likely culprit. “The Tal Shiar, then.”

Donatra nodded. “I suspect the bureau’s young new director might be arrogant enough not to care overmuch about subtlety. He probably even saw to it personally that you became aware of the murder as quickly as you did.”

Suran nodded. “If that’s so, then Rehaek would appear to be a rank amateur. Under his leadership, the Tal Shiar may give us significantly less trouble than it did under Koval.”

Or Rehaek may merely be maneuvering us into underestimating him.“Perhaps. But the main question now is, will the other members of Pardek’s faction overreact to the former senator’s murder?”

“There is little they can do to advance their plans. Not without the support of the military.” With a predatory smile Donatra rarely saw outside of all-out combat situations, Suran added, “Fortunately, we have a good deal to say about that, thanks to our hidden fleet.”

“He who rules the military rules the Empire,”she thought, silently quoting Amarcan’s Axioms,a text she had all but memorized during her Imperial War College studies.

Answering Suran’s battlefield grin with one of her own, she said, “I take it you no longer question the wisdom of using the Great Bloom to conceal the bulk of our forces.”

His head dipped in an abbreviated parody of a courtly bow. “I withdraw most of my earlier objections. Though we still may need to move the fleet quickly, I will concede that the necessity of keeping our strength secret has grown ever more urgent. I only wish we could afford to position our fleet closer to Romulus. We may have to mobilize it very soon, and I remain certain we will receive very little prior warning when that occurs.”

She considered trying to reassure Suran yet again that their “ghost fleet” could indeed be deployed in time to do whatever might be required of it, and that Romulus itself wasn’t completely undefended, even without the extra forces. Instead, she merely regarded him in silence. Though she felt relieved that they finally seemed to be in fairly close accord—a rare thing, despite their mutual loyalty to the late Braeg, and their shared hatred of the pretender Tal’Aura—Donatra also found herself wishing she could derive more satisfaction from it. Perhaps,she thought, that requires more trust than either of us is capable of giving.

Centurion Liravek’s voice suddenly issued from the comm terminal on Donatra’s desk. “Bridge to Commander Donatra.”

Donatra touched a control on her comm panel. “Go ahead, Centurion.”

“You instructed me to alert you shortly before the time of our scheduled departure for Romulus,”the centurion said, his manner crisp and professional. “ If we go to maximum warp during the next fivesiure, we will just arrive at Ki Baratan by the designated time.”

“Very good, Centurion. Leave the fleet here, in concealment. But take the Valdoreto Romulus now. Best speed.”

“At once, Commander.”

Donatra rose from her chair, signaling that it was time to get back to work. Suran did likewise.

“Don’t worry, Suran. The Valdore—and the entire fleet—stands ready to take back the Romulan Empire. Together they will restore all the honor that Shinzon and Tal’Aura have squandered.”

Suran approached the door, which obligingly hissed open. “Provided the Senate factions, Tal’Aura, and the ravening hordes of Remus do not tear the Empire to pieces in the meantime—thus rendering all honor irrelevant.”

With that, he departed from the ready room. The door closed again, leaving her alone with apprehensions that were growing increasingly difficult to tame.

Though the Remans remained relatively calm for the moment, an all-out clash between them and what remained of the Romulan Empire’s traditional power structure might well prove inevitable. Perhaps the die had already been cast by the dead hand of Shinzon. And could she truly rely on her recently acquired Federation allies not to take advantage of the coming chaos? Surely the Klingons, wartime alliance or no, would move to seize the Empire’s resource-rich border worlds should Romulus descend into civil war.

Whatever comes, we must be ready. Or the Empire will surely be lost.

Another of Amarcan’s Axiomssprang from her memory then, providing at least some small measure of comfort: “Fear only fear.”

Chapter Fourteen

U.S.S. TITAN

“Thank you, Commander Ledrah.”

“All part of the service, Captain,”said the chief engineer, her voice filtered through the combadge. “But be careful, sir. This admiral is a sneaky bastard, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Idon’t mind a bit, Nidani. But you’re lucky he hasn’t got here yet. Now, try to stay out of trouble, all right?”

“Always, sir. Ledrah out.”

The ready room fell silent. Riker stared out the observation window at the distant stars. But he felt none of the joy and exhilaration he had experienced barely two weeks ago when he had immersed himself in the holographic projections of the stellar cartography lab. Instead of reveling in the unrestrained freedom of deep space, its dark beauty illuminated by countless distant fires, he found himself searching for naked-eye stellar distortions.

It was a poor trade-off.

His sharp gaze sought out disturbances that were as likely to be the products of drifting debris as cloaked vessels. As he watched, one of the trio of Miranda-class Starfleet aid ships, Der Sonnenaufgang,moved gracefully past the outer port-side edge of Titan’s hull, headed toward the brilliant azure limb of Romulus, about which the convoy had entered orbit less than thirty minutes previously. According to Vale, the other two vessels, the Phoebusand the T’rin’saz,were already well into the process of beaming down food, medical supplies, and heavy-duty industrial replicator equipment, along with a cadre of Starfleet medical, engineering, and security personnel to render aid and oversee distribution of the convoy’s provisions to Romulan civilians dispossessed by the recent social unrest. Der Sonnenaufgangwas concentrating on using her cargo transporters to send particularly heavy matériel, such as construction equipment, down to the planet’s surface.

Despite apprehensions to the contrary from their respective crews, the Federation-Klingon convoy had crossed Romulan space completely unmolested. Even so, there were a large number of small Romulan cruisers and scout ships in the immediate vicinity of Romulus and its four moons, though not nearly as many warbirds as Riker would have expected. Either the Romulans were playing host to their visitors with utmost sincerity, or they were keeping the bulk of their fleet carefully concealed, at least for the moment. He wondered idly if they were lying in the weeds, watching and waiting for the right moment to pounce either on Titan,General Khegh’s vessels, or the Starfleet aid ships.

But that possibility seemed far-fetched given the reception the aid convoy had received so far—and what Romulus stood to lose if the Romulan military were to attack, considering the obvious evidence of the unreliability of the Empire’s internal lines of supply. Senator Pardek and his followers may want to move against the Federation,he thought, but Praetor Tal’Aura seems to be keeping things calm, no matter how unstable her power base might be.

The door chimed, and Riker turned from the window. “Come,” he answered.

Stooping his head slightly, Admiral Akaar stepped through the doorway and into the ready room. Like Riker, he had not yet changed into his dress whites; the secret meeting with the Romulan leaders was still nearly two hours away.

“You asked to see me, Captain?” Akaar said, straightening to his imposing full height once he was inside the ready room.

Riker felt himself tense up, and hoped it didn’t show outwardly. He gestured toward one of the chairs. “Yes, thank you, Admiral.” He sat down behind his desk, and leaned forward as the large Capellan wedged his wide frame into the chair.

Riker paused to take a deep breath, preparing to launch into the speech he had been practicing over and over in his mind; he had debated for hours whether it would accomplish the goal he intended, or if it would instead cost him the admiral’s respect.

“Admiral, normally I wouldn’t speak quite so frankly to someone who outranks me, but this is my ship, my command, and my ready room,” he said finally. “Even though it’s lousy poker strategy, I’ve decided not to wait until the end of the game to put all my cards on the table.”

Akaar betrayed not the slightest hint of emotion as he stared impassively back at Riker. “Your point, Captain?”

“My point is this: since you first came aboard Titan,you have been openly critical of my command style and command decisions,” Riker said, holding the admiral’s intense, dark-eyed gaze. “You have also, in my considered opinion, been less than forthcoming with information vital to the success of this mission and crucial to the safety of my crew. These actions jeopardize my staff’s confidence in me, and, quite frankly, in you.If we are to succeed here, I need you to be honest and forthright about allof the intelligence you have regarding the Romulan political situation. I ask only that you confide in me and let medecide what facts need to be distributed to the crew and when.”

Seeing that Akaar was making no move to reply, Riker took another deep breath. In for a slip, in for a brick.“Admiral, I turned down three commands before accepting this one. I have been a decorated Starfleet officer for better than twenty years now. I know that hardly compares to the eighty-some years you’ve served, but it’s not inconsequential. And neither is the fact that Starfleet continued to offer me command positions until I finally accepted. Whatever doubts you may have about my authority or my methods, you should take them up with meinstead of my staff.”

Riker settled back into his chair, and looked across the uncluttered desktop at Akaar. The older man’s expression remained inscrutable, and the quiet seconds that followed seemed to drag into minutes. Have I gone too far?Riker wondered. Was that a spectacular case of career suicide?

Finally, Akaar leaned forward. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Captain. I shall try to be more circumspect in acknowledging your authority in the future.” His lips formed a grim smile. “When Titanleft Utopia Planitia, I was still receiving many conflicting intelligence reports regarding the Romulans. I made the decision then, rightly or wrongly, to keep intelligence matters purely on a need-to-know basis. I was not trying to keep either you or your staff out of the loop. Rather, I was attempting to determine precisely what you needed to know and when. Trust me when I say that you would likely have been infinitely morefrustrated had you been forced to sit in on many of the interminably long conferences I held with Sorok, T’Sevek, and T’Rel.” He rubbed a knuckle across one of his thick gray eyebrows, as though wearied by the memories.

“I see, Admiral,” Riker said, nodding. Still not content to let go of his anger entirely, he continued in a low, almost perilous tone. “Commander Ledrah has just informed me that Dr. Ra-Havreii has installed an illegal cloaking device aboard one of Titan’s shuttlecraft. I assume this was done on your order.”

Akaar seemed to take Riker’s charge completely in stride. “It was.”

Riker felt his face redden, suddenly awash in memories of similar treaty violations that he had been a party to more than two decades ago under Captain Erik Pressman. “And exactly when did you intend to bring me into thatparticular loop, Admiral?”

To his credit, Akaar didn’t appear flustered in the least. “Whatever you may believe about me, Captain, I did intend to inform you about the cloaking device as soon as it became necessary.”

“That’s very reassuring, sir. It’s good for a captain to know when he’s been made responsible for breaking one of the Federation’s oldest treaties with the Romulan Empire.”

Akaar’s tone grew more than a little sarcastic. “The Romulan Empire itself is in flux, as you have no doubt noticed, Captain. As are the treaties it has made with the Federation.”

In other words, we’re stronger than they are now,Riker thought bitterly. So if we decide to tear up those treaties, the Romulans had damned well better take it and like it.

Aloud, he said only, “Why?”

The admiral’s steel-gray eyebrows seemed to thicken like rising storm fronts. “Patience, Captain. I would prefer to clear up a more general matter first.”

Though he was no less frustrated now than moments ago, Riker knew there was nothing to be gained by pressing the issue. The admiral was clearly saying that he would explain whatever he decided to explain when he felt damned good and ready to do so, and not a moment sooner.

“All right, Admiral.”

“It may surprise you to learn that I believe that your perception of me may be as much right as it is wrong,” Akaar said. “I am an old man, and I have served under many starship captains, and with many crews. Therefore when I enter any new command situation, or interact with a new commander, I suppose I do tend to subject him or her to considerable scrutiny. I can certainly understand how that scrutiny, combined with your own understandable apprehensions about facing your first command assignment—especially on thisparticular mission—could stir up feelings such as those you have expressed.”

Akaar shifted back in his chair, and suddenly looked even taller. “But I must tell you, Captain, that I find your command style to be wise, decisive, and intuitive. You have also made great strides with your crew. Usually it takes several missions for a crew to fully bond with its CO, but I already sense that your staff has developed a strong loyalty toward you…and I am not merely speaking of your fellow Enterprisealumni, or your wife.”

Despite his righteous anger over the cloaking device, Riker could feel the stress begin to pour out of his body like steam escaping from a volcanic fissure. He had expected Akaar to bellow angrily and pull rank on him, or perhaps even to threaten to strip him of his command for having taken such an insubordinate tone with him.

Instead, the Capellan seemed cordial and almost apologetic, even allowing Riker a glimpse of something akin to gentle humor. Riker felt that he was receiving something extraordinarily rare. With an almost stunning shock of recognition, he realized what that something was. It’s almost like getting praise from Dad.

Forcing his thoughts back to the present, Riker said, “Maybe I haveallowed my perceptions of you to be colored by my own…apprehensions. And by the sensitive nature of this mission.”

Akaar extended a large hand. “I hope we have arrived at a mutual understanding, then. You should be satisfied that I am not a deskbound paper-pusher sent here for the express purpose of ‘busting your chops.’ And I will conclude, unless you give me reason later to further revise my opinion, that you are no neophyte in need of supervision. Now shall we move forward, Captain?”

Riker took Akaar’s hand and shook it firmly. “Agreed, Admiral.”

Akaar nodded his head curtly, his earlier grim smile now returned. “Before we break out into a Risan peace song, let me ask: Have you had any luck finding Vulcan life signs on Romulus?”

Riker withdrew his hand and frowned. “No, I’m sorry, sir. Not yet, at any rate. Scanning the Romulan homeworld for Vulcan life signs makes the naked-eye search for a needle in a haystack look pretty easy by comparison.”

“The biosigns we seek are more than likely in, under, or near Ki Baratan.”

“Ki Baratan and the surrounding area have come up dry so far,” Riker said, nodding. “I’ve had Commander Jaza and several of Commander Ledrah’s techs working on re-fining the resolution of the new sensor nets. But the central problem remains: distinguishing two Vulcan biosigns from those of several billion Romulans.”

Akaar’s brow furrowed, and he stared past Riker at the distant glowing limb of Romulus that was visible through the observation window to the left of the desk. “Your search may be complicated by the fact that one of those two Vulcans has been microsurgically modified to pass as a Romulan.”

“Your missing agent?” Riker asked. He remembered that Akaar had mentioned a missing intelligence operative during the first mission briefing, but the admiral hadn’t elaborated when he had later ordered the search for Vulcan life signs.

Akaar nodded, then looked Riker directly in the eyes. “Captain, it is very important to me that we find that agent, whatever fate may have befallen him. I must confess that I have a personal stake in the return of both Ambassador Spock and our operative.”

Akaar’s haunted expression explained why the admiral was willing to play so fast and loose with treaty law. He’s planning to run a surreptitious rescue raid down on Romulus,Riker thought, just in case we fail to arrange a quiet, unobtrusive rescue via transporter.

“Who is the agent you sent to track down Ambassador Spock?” Riker asked, already beginning to bristle again at the admiral’s apparently ingrained reticence about sharing information.

“The agent is Commander Tuvok,” said Akaar.

Riker’s eyebrows furrowed. “The name sounds familiar…”

“Tuvok is a career tactical specialist and intelligence operative, as well as having served aboard the U.S.S. Voyagerduring that vessel’s unplanned detour to the Delta Quadrant. Most recently, he was an instructor at Starfleet Academy. Admiral Janeway of Starfleet Command and Admiral Batanides of Starfleet Intelligence agreed with my assessment that he was the officer best qualified to infiltrate Romulus and make contact with Ambassador Spock for the purpose of persuading him to leave Romulus for a conference with the president and the Federation Council. So Tuvok was tapped for the job a few months ago.”

Once again, Akaar looked past Riker at the observation window and the planet that lay beyond it. “I first served with Tuvok long ago, back when we were both much, much younger. We were both assigned to Excelsiorfor a time, under Captain Hikaru Sulu.” A wry smile slowly spread across his lips. “I think you would have liked Captain Sulu. He, too, tended to favor unconventional command methodologies. And he probably would have reacted as you did when faced with a secretive, overbearing admiral. Hikaru was brought up on insubordination charges more than once, but he always managed to beat them somehow. Results count for more than protocol, after all.”

“So you and Tuvok are friends,” Riker said.

“We were friends, once,” Akaar said quietly. “But we had a…disagreement many years ago. We have said scarcely a word to each other over the past three decades.”

Riker didn’t need Deanna with him to conclude that Akaar was rehashing old regrets. The admiral’s need to search for Vulcan life signs was not purely professional, but also deeply personal. Riker was already aware that Spock had known the admiral since the day of his birth; the rightful hereditary leader of Capella had been named “Leonard James Akaar,” after two of Spock’s closest friends, the chief medical officer and captain, respectively, of the old Constitution-class U.S.S. Enterprise.And now that he was aware that the missing Tuvok also had a personal connection to the admiral, Riker empathized. Not only had he recently lost one of his closest friends, Data—right here in Romulan space—but Riker also had to acknowledge, if only to himself, that his own father’s recent violent death remained a painful, unhealed wound.

“Whatever we do, we must make contact with Ambassador Spock,” Akaar said. “He may provide indispensable assistance in stabilizing the political situation on Romulus—Sorok’s low opinion of the Unificationist movement notwithstanding.”

“I agree,” Riker said, his voice strong and steady. Still, he wondered what else about this mission Akaar might still be holding back from him. Not twenty minutes earlier, Deanna had reiterated yet again her opinion that the admiral was being less than forthright concerning Spock. “We’ll find them, sir.”

But even as Riker made this assurance, a chill of dread entered his mind.

How do Iknow we’ll find them? They may both already be dead.

And he was sure he saw the same misgivings reflected in Akaar’s dark, downcast eyes.