Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Theriault opened her eyes and squinted into the light of day.

The rocks that she had lined up in front of her nook in the cavern’s wall were many hours cold. She was curled in upon herself, huddled against the rough stone wall, lying on a bed of rocky sand. As her eyes adjusted, she looked at her legs to see if the bruises she had suffered during her time in the river had begun changing colors yet.

To her surprise, there were no bruises at all. Her mind replayed all the painful collisions she had suffered with rocks hidden beneath the muddy brown water and her battering impacts against the sides of the underground tunnel. She had felt each bruise throbbing with pain yesterday when she emerged from the water to seek shelter in the nook. The steady aching of her wounds had all but lulled her to sleep. Probing her flanks and arms with her fingertips, she found no injuries. No contusions, no lacerations, not so much as a scratch or a scrape.

Beyond the rocks, something was moving.

It was a slow flutter of light and vapor above the water. A colossal humanoid figure dwelled within it, hovering dozens of meters above the center of the cavern’s vast pond. The swirling clouds of multihued mist that surrounded the giant moved like gossamer underwater. A broad vertical column of sunlight, from the opening in the cavern ceiling high overhead, fell upon the ethereal being.

She crawled out of the nook and climbed over the rocks. Her muscles were stiff. At first the luminous titan seemed to take no notice of her; it levitated silently in its shaft of golden radiance, surrounded by the whispers of falling water and the multiple echoes of the vast caves surrounding the pond.

Then it faded for a moment, becoming almost transparent, like a sculpture of smoke losing its shape. Seconds later the entity reincorporated itself, still in the same place but now facing and looking directly at Theriault. The young woman was not afraid; in fact she was mesmerized by the prismatic beauty that floated nearly a kilometer away.

In a halting voice she said, “Hello?”

Its attention fixed upon her, bringing with it a sensation like standing in the merciless glare of the desert sun. Your injuries were deep, he responded telepathically, his psychic voice like a tremor that jumbled all her thoughts into chaos.

“Gently,” was all she could think to say. “Please.”

He spoke in a voice of thunder that shook the stone beneath her feet. “Your mind was not made to hear the voice.”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.” She took a few careful steps forward until she reached the edge of the water. Looking directly into his luciferous splendor was painful, so she averted her eyes downward, toward his incandescent but wavering reflection on the pond’s surface. “I’m Vanessa Theriault.”

“I am the Apostate.”

20

T’Prynn sat sequestered in the crimson swelter of her office. Her curved desktop, hewn from a slab of black marble with thin veins of white, was barren except for a wide terminal set to her left, an interface for the computer in front of her, and a set of comm system controls recessed into the desktop on her right.

Normally, a harsh white overhead light shone down upon her chair and desk, but for the past several days she had found its glare too oppressive to tolerate. Instead she had chosen to work in the shadows, keenly aware of the irony that doing so served as a metaphor for her career as an intelligence officer.

In contrast to the dim red spills of light on the walls, her monitor bathed her in a pale greenish glow as it displayed the latest bad news. The Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za had shipped out of port nearly three hours earlier, just after 1300 hours station time. She made some rough calculations and was concerned to note that the Klingons would likely reach Jinoteur at approximately the same time as Quinn and Pennington, who unfortunately had been slow to answer her request for help.

Another matter that was complicating her work was M’Benga’s and Fisher’s pointed inquiries about her medical history. She had tried to placate the two physicians with the release of generalized reports, but they had continued to harass Starfleet for more information. Logs of M’Benga’s communications made it clear to T’Prynn that he was contacting medical personnel with whom she had previously served. He had also paid a visit to Commodore Reyes, an act that had proved sufficient to prompt Reyes to access her records as well. The commodore’s security clearance was even higher than her own, which meant that he very likely knew that T’Prynn had sealed her own records. So far Reyes had not asked her about it, but she did not expect this period of grace to persist for long.

Terminating the investigation into her medical records would not be difficult, but the physicians’ aggressive methods demanded less than subtle responses. If this matter is to be contained, she decided, it must be done in a manner both swift and decisive. She resolved to put an end to it before the doctors exposed her mental infirmity to Reyes and the admiralty. If her superiors learned how profound a psychological affliction Sten’s katra-haunting of her mind represented, they would revoke her security clearances. Even if Starfleet, for its own purposes, spared her the indignity of a court-martial, it would be well within its purview to issue her a dishonorable discharge. I will not end my career in disgrace, she promised herself. I will not be humiliated.

That was a matter for another time, however. More pressing was how to further delay the Zin’za from reaching Jinoteur. Even an hour’s time would be enough to give Quinn and Pennington the advantage of reaching the Sagittarius first. Whether their modifications of the hardware aboard Quinn’s antiquated Mancharan starhopper would be sufficient to deceive the Shedai artillery on the fourth planet’s moons was out of her hands.

She began formulating a plan that would entail tricking the Klingon battle cruiser’s commander into believing that his fellow captains had launched a major attack against a Tholian fleet nearby and that he was being summoned to the fray. It was a thin ruse; T’Prynn thought of a dozen reasons it would fail, but extracting success from hopeless plans was her job.

As she weighed the relative merits of several variations on the deception, her door signal buzzed. A glance at the security image on her monitor showed Anna Sandesjo standing outside her office. The two women had not seen or spoken to each other for a week, since T’Prynn’s sudden exit from Manón’s cabaret.

Sandesjo had left several messages accusing T’Prynn of avoiding her. T’Prynn had seen no point in acknowledging Sandesjo’s claims, because they were true. She was avoiding the disguised Klingon spy; confronting her to deny that she had been avoiding confronting her would have been utterly illogical.

Sandesjo’s furious knocking on the door made it clear she did not feel the same way.

T’Prynn reached toward the intercom’s talk switch, intending to dismiss Sandesjo. She hesitated at the last moment. Her finger hovered over the button as she reconsidered. Then she pressed the switch to open the door. It hissed open, letting in Sandesjo and a blinding flood of white light. The auburn-haired woman stepped clear of the door’s sensor, and the portal slid shut behind her, plunging the office back into ruddy shadows.

Sandesjo stopped a few meters from T’Prynn’s desk and said, “We need to talk.”

“Your timing leaves much to be desired,” T’Prynn said. “This is not an opportune moment to discuss our relationship.”

Flustered, Sandesjo replied, “My motives are professional.”

“Continue,” T’Prynn said.

Sandesjo paced in front of T’Prynn’s desk. “Over the past several weeks, Turag and Lugok have become suspicious,” she said. “They’ve noticed that my reports have become less frequent and less detailed. My recent delay in noting the departure of the Sagittarius”—T’Prynn caught Sandesjo’s fleeting glare of reproach—“made matters worse. My ability to continue functioning as a double agent will be compromised unless you can give me something useful to tell them.”

“Your role as Jetanien’s senior attaché must give you access to all manner of diplomatic secrets.”

Shaking her head, Sandesjo replied, “Imperial Intelligence doesn’t care about diplomatic secrets. They already assume that your politicians and envoys lie as a matter of policy.”

“A reasonable presumption,” T’Prynn conceded. A plan was forming in her thoughts as she listened to Sandesjo go on.

“I need something solid,” Sandesjo said. “If I can’t give them details, they’ll assume I’ve been exposed. If that happens, their next move would be to get rid of me—permanently.”

T’Prynn tapped a few keys on her computer interface panel, blanked her screen, and got up from her chair. “Very well,” she said, crossing to a wall-mounted companel. With the press of a button she ejected a red data card from one of its slots. She turned and handed the card to Sandesjo. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Everything you will need to prevent the I.K.S. Zin’za from being destroyed when it reaches the Jinoteur system.”

Sandesjo accepted the data card and looked askance at it before putting it in her jacket pocket. “Destroyed by whom?”

“The Zin’za is heading into a trap,” T’Prynn said, concocting the lie as she spoke. “It’s made two failed attempts to explore Jinoteur IV. At present, there is what appears to be a derelict Tholian battleship in orbit of that planet. Yesterday, Klingon forces in this sector intercepted what they believe to be a distress signal from the U.S.S. Sagittarius. The Zin’za has been sent to neutralize the crew of the Sagittarius and capture its computer core for analysis. When it reaches the Jinoteur system, however, it will find its communications jammed—and four Federation starships lying in ambush.”

Sandesjo reacted with a dubious stare. “An ambush? That doesn’t sound like the Starfleet I know.”

“The attack will be made to appear as if it was committed by the Tholians, sparking conflict between your peoples. The Federation’s intention is to weaken both your nations, while fortifying its own position in the Taurus Reach.”

Stepping forward, Sandesjo encroached deliberately on T’Prynn’s personal space. “You’ve never given me intel this precise or this important before. Why now?”

“Because your cover—your life—is in peril,” T’Prynn said, continuing to prevaricate with ease. “Sparing your countrymen from an unprovoked attack will preserve your credibility with Imperial Intelligence. Furthermore, disrupting the ambush, though it might complicate Starfleet’s mission in this sector, will not cost Federation lives—at least, not directly.” Mirroring the other woman’s bold behavior, T’Prynn stepped forward until they were separated by mere centimeters. “It is a logical choice,” T’Prynn added. “Violence is prevented, and a valuable asset is protected.”

Sandesjo’s voice was a husky whisper, her words a warm breath of desire upon T’Prynn’s lips. “Is that all I am to you? A valuable asset…?”

“No,” T’Prynn whispered back. “You are much more than that. More than I am able to put into words…Anna.” She resisted the urge to pull back from the Klingon woman’s intensely magnetic presence. Sandesjo smiled and grazed T’Prynn’s lips with her own. “The information about the Zin’za is time-sensitive,” said T’Prynn. Sandesjo stroked her hands slowly down T’Prynn’s hips. “It should be relayed promptly.”

Gathering fistfuls of fabric from the bottom of T’Prynn’s red minidress, Sandesjo asked in a lustfully breathy hush, “How long till the Zin’za reaches Jinoteur?”

“Eight hours,” T’Prynn said, succumbing to all her most illogical and most taboo emotional impulses.

“More than enough time,” Sandesjo said, hiking up T’Prynn’s dress over her hips and guiding her backward toward her desk.

T’Prynn made only a token gesture at resistance. “I am on duty,” she protested as her raised hands found Sandesjo’s breasts.

“Love’s fire respects not the hour,” Sandesjo said, quoting an obscure Klingon poet whose name T’Prynn had forgotten. “And in love’s fire,” she said as T’Prynn reflexively grabbed and twisted a lock of Sandesjo’s hair, “I burn for you.”

Captain Rana Desai sat in a private office in Starbase 47’s Judge Advocate General Corps complex. The JAG contingent on Vanguard had been allocated more space than they had at first known how to utilize. Even junior lawyers and clerks had been granted private office space, since it was at a surplus. One of those empty offices Desai had appropriated for a special purpose: it was devoted to the investigation and preparation of a single case, one that so far remained her personal obsession.

One room. One case. Seemingly infinite questions.

There were too many connections for Desai to see them all at once. After weeks of looking at lists and timelines, she had decided several days ago that the only way she would ever be able to see the big picture of this case would be to start putting it up on a wall, one piece at a time.

So many names, she lamented. So many faces. Like most such charts she had seen compiled, this one was bottom-heavy. Most criminal organizations were supported by vast numbers of foot soldiers. Gathering data from security agencies on worlds throughout the Federation had been time-consuming but not especially difficult. Acquiring intelligence from neutral planets, or from within the borders of hostile powers, had proved significantly more complicated. Starfleet’s code of justice was very specific about what methods were permissible for obtaining evidence.

Bribery was not one of them. That had closed off several avenues of inquiry almost immediately.

She could accept information from Starfleet Intelligence about foreign subjects and events only if she could prove that the information had not been acquired through extralegal means. Anything obtained through coercion or blackmail was considered tainted and therefore inadmissible. The few Starfleet Intelligence agents that she had dealt with always insisted that their data were “clean,” but when pressed to account for their provenance or chain of custody, they inevitably balked and became impossibly vague. That she had been able to verify any of Starfleet’s intelligence for legal use was nothing short of a miracle.

It was late, nearly 2100 hours. Desai had limited her efforts on this case to her free time. Officially, this project did not exist, and until she had reason to take it public, or was ordered by the judge advocate general himself to take action, this isolated room was where it would remain, shrouded in obscurity behind a locked door only she could open.

A pyramid of names and photographs had completely covered the long wall in front of the room’s solitary desk and chair. The pyramid’s lower tier was packed with Ganz’s retinue of several dozen petty criminals and prostitutes, most of whom carried warrants for their arrest—but none from worlds that had extradition treaties with the United Federation of Planets.

The key players at the next level of Ganz’s operation were Morikmol, a hulking Tarmelite who allegedly had ripped a Klingon’s arms completely out of their sockets during a bar fight on Davlos III; Reke, a drug smuggler notorious for imbibing almost as much of his products as he transported; Zulo, whose specialty was disposing of bodies and eradicating forensic evidence; and Joshua Kane, a human who had eight perfect alibis to explain his coincidental presence on eight far-flung planets at precisely the times of eight spectacular heists.

Above them was Ganz’s “business manager,” Zett Nilric, a dapper and utterly sociopathic Nalori assassin. Zett had moved up in Ganz’s organization after the “disappearance” of his predecessor, Jaeq, who had gone missing after assaulting Starfleet personnel on the station. Ganz’s people, of course, insisted that Jaeq had fled the starbase, but Desai suspected that Zulo was the one responsible for Jaeq’s permanent absence.

Parallel with Zett was an Orion woman named Neera. By all accounts, she oversaw the flesh trade on Ganz’s ship, the Omari-Ekon. Just like all the others, she rarely set foot on the station itself, and under the terms of the Federation’s treaty with Orion, the interiors of Orion-registered starships were sovereign Orion territory, not subject to Federation law. So long as they confined their dealings to their own ship, there was nothing that Desai could do about any of it.

The line that linked Ganz to privateer Cervantes Quinn, on the other hand, was a separate matter. Much of Quinn’s business appeared to be transacted aboard Starbase 47, and the pattern of his activity over the past several months suggested that many of his supposedly legitimate shipments had been used to smuggle Ganz’s assorted varieties of contraband. The customs office so far had found no evidence of smuggling aboard Quinn’s ship, the Rocinante, but Desai suspected that she knew why: the dotted line that bound Quinn to the station’s Starfleet Intelligence liaison, Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn.

No hard evidence had yet been found to confirm that Quinn was an unofficial operative of Starfleet Intelligence, but Desai suspected that it would emerge soon enough. T’Prynn has the authority to protect him from customs and routine patrols, she reasoned. That makes him useful to Ganz and gives her a mole inside the Orion’s operation. If it was revealed that T’Prynn had facilitated or sanctioned criminal activity, the resulting public uproar would all but guarantee a court-martial—which would, in turn, expose the solid line that connected T’Prynn to Commodore Diego Reyes.

This would be the heart of the case, and Desai knew it. Manón had seen Reyes meet privately with Ganz in her cabaret less than twenty-four hours earlier; that merited a solid line from the commodore to the Orion merchant prince. The station’s commanding officer was now linked to a reputed mobster, who in turn lorded over a roguish privateer who also answered to Reyes’s direct subordinate. It was a closed circle.

Assuming Diego compartmentalized his communications, she figured, I probably won’t be able to put Jetanien on the board. She momentarily considered adding the reporter Pennington with a dotted line to Ganz but concluded there was no evidence that he had done anything except exercise his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Her communicator beeped on her hip. She removed it from its pocket and flipped it open. “Desai here.”

Reyes replied, “Dinner’s almost ready. Are you still coming, or do you have to work late?”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes, Diego,” she said. “Go ahead and open the wine.”

He sounded happy. “Will do. Don’t be long.”

“I won’t,” she said, and closed her communicator.

She stared at the pyramid of suspects and evidence on the wall and at the photo of her boyfriend which formed its apex. This, she admitted to herself, is going to be complicated.

Just after midnight, Reyes was drifting off to sleep with his arm around Rana’s waist when his door signal buzzed. He lifted his head and scowled, then slid out from under the sheets and grabbed his robe. Desai rolled over as he tied the dark blue robe shut. Seeing she was still asleep, he stole away softly.

The door signal buzzed again as he plodded out of the bedroom and across the living room to the door. He unlocked it, and it slid open to reveal Zeke Fisher.

Dark bags drooped under the elderly doctor’s eyes, which were heavy-lidded with the desire for sleep. He held up a data slate. “My forensic report on the Gamma Tauri attacks,” he drawled, sounding more exhausted than he looked.

“Come in,” Reyes said, stepping out of the doorway and ushering his old friend inside. Fisher’s gait was stiff and slow. “Zeke, have you slept since I asked for this report?”

As the door closed behind him, Fisher answered, “No, and if it wasn’t for the magic of espresso, there’s no way I’d still be awake after twenty-one hours in the lab.” He handed the data slate to Reyes. “I’ll sum up: the colonists were killed by the Shedai, no doubt about it.”

Skimming the report, Reyes found it to be exacting and comprehensive. Fisher had ruled out every alternative theory that might have cast doubt on his findings and had documented in painstaking detail the evidence supporting his conclusions. Guess he didn’t trust me to keep my word. He held up the report. “Good work.” Then he walked over to a wall companel and thumbed a comm switch for the operations center. “Reyes to ops.”

Lieutenant Commander Yael Dohan, the gamma-shift officer of the watch, answered the hail. “Go ahead, sir.”

“Get a scrambled comm to the Lovell, priority one: Storm warning confirmed for Gamma Tauri. Get those colonists off the surface—now. JAG will advise shortly. Message ends.”

“Aye, sir,” Dohan replied. “Transmitting now.”

“Reyes out.” He thumbed the comm switch back to its off position, then directed a glum look at Fisher. “So much for getting a decent night’s rest.”

Fisher rubbed his thumb against his forefinger and smirked. “See this, Diego? It’s the world’s smallest violin—”

“All right,” Reyes growled, cutting him off, “I get the point. Go get some sleep.” He escorted the doctor out of his quarters and locked the door behind him.

The commodore did not relish his next task: waking up Rana Desai. The only thing that would make her angrier than disrupting her sleep cycle would be asking her to violate Federation law by authorizing Starfleet to forcibly remove the colonists from Gamma Tauri IV. In the next ten minutes, he would have to commit both sins. Setting his course for the bedroom, he sighed and resigned himself to the fact that this day was off to a positively miserable start, and it held every promise of only getting worse as it went along.