Bundling up in the special thermal clothing Grelun’s quartermaster had issued him, Zweller ventured a short distance outside the Army of Light’s compound—and into the permanent night of Chiaros IV’s dark side. To ensure that Ruardh’s forces couldn’t find them, Grelun’s troops had relieved him of his combadge, though Zweller knew it probably wasn’t detectable through the planet’s heavily ionized atmosphere anyway. But he knew also that outlaws could ill afford to scrimp on caution.
Zweller felt the thin rime of hoarfrost crunching beneath his boots as he walked across a featureless, rockstrewn plain. The air smelled of ozone, giving it a burned quality that belied its bitter chill. Despite the layers of clothing separating him from the elements, the wind bit into his flesh with innumerable small razor teeth, numbing his nose and ears. The cold seemed to aggravate the lassitude caused by the planet’s intense gravity. He jammed his gloved hands deeply into his jacket pockets in a vain effort to warm them.
About fifty meters before him sat a squat, frostencrusted structure, about the size of a Starfleet photon torpedo tube. The apparatus gave off a faint blue glow, which Zweller assumed wasn’t visible from the air; he recognized it as a Romulan cloaking device, probably merely one of many. Doubtless the machine was here courtesy of Koval, and its presence helped explain how the rebels had evaded capture for so long. Though Grelun evidently hadn’t seen fit to conceal the cloaking device from him, Zweller was certain that the blue light surrounding it was a protective forcefield of some kind. He probably wouldn’t be able to damage it even if he wanted to.
Zweller looked upward. The sky was utterly dark, except where small gaps in the omnipresent Nightside haze revealed momentary, random patterns of multicolored light every few seconds. It was an atmospheric conflagration that would have put Earth’s Northern Lights to shame. Zweller tried to guess the rebel base’s exact position—information that Grelun, the Army of Light’s new leader, had yet to divulge to him—but quickly gave up the effort. The atmospheric pyrotechnics gave him no clue; the highly energetic interactions between the solar wind and the planet’s magnetic field made such auroral displays visible from any point on the globe, and would be visible even in the brilliance of Dayside. The rebel compound could be anywhere from just nightward of Chiaros IV’s habitable twilight meridian to one of the poles to the frigid, windswept reaches of the Nightside equator.
A flash of illumination unlike any of the others drew his attention; it resolved quickly into a small point of light that moved almost directly overhead. At first he thought he’d sighted one of the outer Chiarosan planets until he realized that the luminous speck was moving far too rapidly. He followed the light with his eyes for several minutes, until it vanished into the haze on the horizon.
A government patrol ship, Zweller thought. It was right on top of us, but it couldn’t pierce the cloak.
The crackle of a footfall directly behind Zweller interrupted his ruminations. He instantly turned to face the sound, backing away to give himself room to maneuver. A colorful flash from the sky allowed Zweller to recognize Grelun’s dark visage, just a few meters away. For such huge people, these Chiarosans are remarkably stealthy, he thought.
Apparently contemptuous of the elements, Grelun wore only a light jacket over his gray duty uniform. Zweller tried to suppress a shiver and failed.
“You really shouldn’t sneak up on a trained Starfleet officer like that,” Zweller said, pitching his voice only a little louder than the chill winds.
“Do not worry, human,” Grelun said with an inscrutable smile. “You could not have hurt me.”
Anger flared within Zweller’s chest, momentarily banishing the cold. “Let’s hope we never have a reason to test that hypothesis.” For reasons Zweller still couldn’t fathom, Grelun was even more distrustful and xenophobic than his late predecessor, Falhain.
The Chiarosan chuckled dismissively, then glanced skyward. “I see that you are still brooding about your silent ship.”
It was useless to deny it. But it was just as useless to give up hope entirely. “Maybe your subspace receiver isn’t functioning properly,” Zweller said, trying to sound upbeat. “It can’t possibly work as well as the government’s orbital comm system. Maybe Captain Blaylock has been trying to raise me for the past week but can’t cut through all the atmospheric static.”
Grelun nodded soberly. “This may be so,” he said, and took a single long stride back toward the compound. “Nevertheless, my communications sentinels will continue listening to the sky.”
Grelun’s tone held little hope. The rebels did possess a fairly sensitive subspace radio transceiver, after all. Despite its being located at the bottom of Chiaros IV’s turbulent atmosphere, it should have picked up some trace of the Slayton by now. But the starship apparently had been silent ever since Koval had arranged for the shuttle Archimedes to be diverted here more than a week ago. And the security-minded Grelun had given strict orders that no subspace signals be transmitted until after the planetary referendum. Zweller could make no attempt to contact his crewmates until Grelun had finished carrying out Falhain’s plan to evict the Federation from Chiaros IV.
But Zweller had another, even more fundamental reason to worry about the Slayton ’s fate. He knew it was useless to dwell on it, but he found the matter impossible to ignore completely. He still couldn’t resolve one simple, nagging question to his satisfaction: If the Slayton and her crew were safe, then why had the Federation dispatched a second starship to the ill-fated conference in HagratÈ? Grelun hadn’t seen fit to divulge which starship the two captured Starfleet officers had come from— if he even knew or cared about that piece of information—but Zweller was certain that he had never seen either of the unconscious captives before the rebels had made their escape from the battle in the Chiarosan capital.
Grelun interrupted his gloomy reverie. Taking a single long stride back toward the compound, he said, “Freezing to death will not make your silent comrades speak to you. And I have need of your services.”
Zweller’s teeth were beginning to chatter. “What do you want me to do?”
“Our two newest . . . guests have at last regained consciousness.” Grelun reached into his jacket and produced a Starfleet-issue tricorder, one of the devices his troops had confiscated from the crew of the Archimedes. He tossed it to Zweller, who caught it clumsily between his cold-numbed hands.
“I wish for our guests to see what I have already shown to you,” Grelun said. “But you must be the one to show them, if they are to be persuaded that our cause is just.”
“I can do that,” Zweller said without hesitation. Stowing the tricorder on his belt, he fell into step beside Grelun.
He felt he had every reason to cooperate with Grelun’s request. Despite the complications created by Falhain’s unforeseen demise at the HagratÈ peace conference—it was unfortunate that Zweller had not had a chance to confer with Tabor prior to the ambassador’s arrival on Chiaros IV, or to discuss the aftermath of the melee with him—Zweller was satisfied that he had already achieved Section 31’s desired objective: He had set the vast wheels of Chiarosan internal politics into motion, and once started they couldn’t be stopped. The outcome of the referendum on Federation membership—to be held in a mere three days—was now all but certain to go in favor of Romulus, thanks to Starfleet’s ‘catastrophic failure to maintain order’ in HagratÈ. And assuming that Koval was as good as his word, Zweller would soon return to Federation space with ample compensation for this favor—a list of the Romulan intelligence operatives working within the Federation.
Zweller could see no serious downside to his decision to help Grelun end the genocidal war being carried out by Ruardh’s armies. This sort of meddling would almost certainly get him cashiered out of Starfleet, but he had been thinking about retiring soon anyway.
He felt certain he would still have a home within Section 31 after the conclusion of the Chiaros affair. After all, his assisting Grelun couldn’t affect the outcome of this mission. And, even more important, it felt like the right thing to do.
The time had finally
come to bring the horrible truth about Chiaros IV to
light.
Flanked by a pair of silent Chiarosan warriors, Zweller and Grelun made their way along a corridor adjacent to—but not directly visible from—the solitaryconfinement cells in which Commander Roget and the other Slayton captives were still being held pending the referendum. After continuing for several meters, they stopped before a small, doorless chamber, where a single guard stood at attention, his back to the slightly orangetinged forcefield that rippled across the room’s entrance.
Inside the detention cell, a man and a woman sat side by side on a low-slung cot, the room’s only piece of furniture. Both prisoners were attired in somewhat distressedlooking Starfleet dress uniforms, the man wearing red, the woman in blue. Though their combadges were missing, each officer’s collar bore a trio of shiny brass pips, indicating that both held the rank of commander.
I guess I won’t be pulling rank on anyone here. Have to rely on the old Corey Zweller charm instead.
The man rose to his feet first. Tall and vigorous-looking, he had rumpled brown hair that made an incongruous counterpoint to his neatly trimmed beard. His manner was calm, belying the outrage behind his blue eyes.
“I am Grelun, who now guides the Army of Light,” the dark-haired Chiarosan said to the male prisoner before the officer could speak. Then the Chiarosan angled an impossibly limber elbow in Zweller’s direction. “I present to you your countryman, Commander Cortin Zweller.” Grelun then made a courtly, triple-jointed bow toward the prisoners. Zweller interpreted the gesture as ironic, a Chiarosan sign of contempt.
Barely acknowledging Grelun, Riker trained his piercing gaze on Zweller. “Would you mind explaining exactly what is going on here, Commander?”
Abruptly returning to an upright posture, Grelun overrode Zweller before he could respond. “Please accept my apologies, Commander Riker, Commander Troi. I regret that you were handled so roughly. I assure you, we were as gentle with you as the circumstances would permit.”
Zweller noticed that the woman’s eyes were unusually dark. He decided that she probably wasn’t human after all, at least not completely. Perhaps she had some Betazoid ancestry. That could pose a problem. Zweller used the disciplines he’d learned during his training as an agent and quickly erected a barrier around his thoughts and emotions.
“Then can I infer that you intend to return us to the Enterprise?” Troi asked.
The Enterprise ? Zweller struggled to conceal his surprise from the Betazoid. Johnny. He hoped his old friend wouldn’t get himself swept up in this dangerous situation. But he remembered the brashness of his old Academy classmate all too well; if Jean-Luc Picard was here, then he would soon be in the thick of things. And an already complex and dangerous situation would undoubtedly become even more so.
“In a short time, yes, we will send you back to your ship,” Grelun told Troi.
Riker glanced at Troi. “Deanna?”
The Betazoid scrutinized Grelun for a long moment before speaking. “He’s not lying, Will. Though he harbors a great deal of hostility toward us, he’s sincere about his intention to release us later. But I sense there’s something important he wants to accomplish first.”
Grelun bared the points of his teeth, evidently displeased that one of his prisoners could find him so transparent.
Looking as though he’d just solved a puzzle, Riker addressed Grelun, ignoring Zweller for the moment. “I think I understand now. We’ll be free to go. But only after the Romulans have finished . . . influencing the planetary referendum.”
“Once my people formally acknowledge the Federation’s inability to make good on its promises of security and order,” Grelun said coolly. “Only then will you be free to leave us.”
“If your faction wins in the vote,” Riker said, “we won’t have a lot of other options.”
“Exactly so. Your Federation’s own laws will force your withdrawal from our world. And with the Federation gone, our independence from all degenerate outworlders will be assured.”
“That is until the Romulans take your world from you by force,” Troi said placidly.
Grelun’s hands twirled for a moment in a complex, eye-blurring pattern, as though he were cleansing the very air of her words. “This they could have tried to do long, long ago. Because they have not, we will speak no more of it.”
Zweller noticed that Riker had begun looking at him appraisingly. “Commander Cortin Zweller,” Riker said, a calculating look in his eyes. “Captain Picard has told me a great deal about you. Including the fact that we might find you among the Slayton ’s survivors.”
Survivors?
Zweller’s heart leaped into his throat. He took a deep, calming breath before speaking, pausing to make certain that his mental shields were still intact.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the Slayton was blown to pieces several days ago,” Riker said.
“By whom?” Zweller said, swallowing hard. He had grown quite close to many members of the Slayton ’s crew. For the past several days, he’d been trying hard to avoid facing the possibility that, except for the few who had accompanied him to Chiaros IV, they were all dead.
“When we left the Enterprise for the peace conference,” Riker said, “we were still trying to determine exactly what happened.”
Zweller wondered if Koval might be involved. But what did the Tal Shiar chairman have to gain from the Slayton ’s destruction? It made no sense; the Romulans had already all but won the Geminus Gulf. The region simply didn’t have enough value to justify the commission of an overt act of war.
“We recovered some wreckage,” Troi said, “shortly before we escorted Ambassador Tabor to the peace conference.”
Taking care not to let the Betazoid sense just how well he knew Aubin Tabor, Zweller said, “How is the ambassador?”
Riker shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. The last time I saw him, he’d just been run through with a rebel dagger. One of your friends here evidently tried to assassinate him.”
Zweller suddenly felt as though there wasn’t enough air in the room. So many friends and colleagues gone, so quickly. It was too much to digest all at once.
“You call us assassins?” Grelun barked, his voice tinged with murder. He made a quick hand signal to the holding-cell guard, who immediately dropped the forcefield. Then a wicked-looking dagger appeared in Grelun’s hand, as though conjured out of thin air. The rebel leader took a single menacing step toward Riker.
Riker made no move to back away, nor did Troi.
“Speak that lie again, human, and I will cut out your tongue! Your ‘ambassador’ was caught drawing a weapon on Falhain.”
“That’s not how it looked from where I was standing,” Riker said. His muscles were tensed, but he didn’t budge. He neither advanced nor gave ground.
Zweller knew that to show fear before a roused Chiarosan warrior was to provoke a lightning-swift, lethal attack. But he also knew he had to disperse some of the tension in the air, or else Riker was sure to be crippled or killed. Concealing his apprehension behind a stern expression, Zweller stepped between the two men and spread his hands in a placating gesture.
“Falhain would not have wanted this, Noble Grelun,” Zweller said, struggling to back his words with the correct blend of authority and deference. “Too much blood has already been spilled. Instead, I ask you: Let me show them what you’ve shown me.”
A long moment passed, during which time Zweller wondered if Grelun weren’t seriously considering killing them all. Then the rebel leader sheathed his blade as quickly as he had drawn it. He stared at Riker and Troi, his eyes still as cold and hard as the farthest reaches of frozen Nightside.
Grelun’s gaze remained fixed on them even as his body swiveled toward his guards, to whom he said, “Manacle them and bring them to the vehicle pool.” He then stalked away down the corridor and was gone.
Riker emerged from the cell, followed by Troi. The presence of the three armed guards seemed to persuade them both that any attempt at escape would be illadvised. The pair stood impassively while the guards bound their hands before them.
“I don’t see any handcuffs on you, Commander,” Riker said to Zweller. “Am I correct in assuming that you’ve decided to cooperate with these people?”
Zweller sought the proper words to answer Riker’s pointed question, but they refused to come. What came instead was a surge of guilt for having deprived Riker and Troi of their combadges after they’d been dragged unconscious into the catacombs beneath the HagratÈ auditorium; there, a pair of Falhain’s most vigilant guards had kept Zweller “supervised,” and out of the fray for the duration of the peace conference. Zweller knew that by taking the combadges—which the Chiarosan guardsmen had promptly confiscated—he may have prevented Riker and Troi from being beamed to the relative safety of their own shuttle.
But he was also well aware that brief captivity could be a powerful instrument of persuasion. And it was terribly important that he persuade them.
“I have no choice but to help Grelun and his people,” Zweller said finally. “And all I ask is that you keep an open mind.”
Then he led Riker,
Troi, and the guards down the corridor toward one of the
hangars.
The antigrav-propelled transport’s hull was painted a dull, unobtrusive black. The passenger cabin was wide, windowless, and unadorned, everything in its interior the same monotonous gunmetal blue. Zweller shifted in a vain effort to get comfortable in his too-hard, toostraight seat. Clearly, human ergonomic considerations had not been uppermost in the minds of this vehicle’s designers.
A pair of surly-countenanced warriors, a male and a female, sat facing the still-manacled Riker and Troi, who passed the fifteen-minute trip in silence. Seated between the guards, Zweller let his thoughts wander behind the safety of his mental shields. Though he found the transport’s gentle shudders and vibrations oddly comforting, he knew he didn’t dare relax his guard in the Betazoid’s presence.
Zweller found himself desperately hoping that Tabor had somehow managed to survive whatever injuries he’d suffered in the Chiarosan capital. Zweller had always regarded Tabor as both a friend and a mentor, the man who had given his life and career a clarity of purpose that even Starfleet Academy had not been able to do. Tabor had saved him from the consequences of his youthful impetuousness decades ago, on more than one occasion. Had Tabor not warned him away from the beautiful young woman Zweller had taken up with during a shore leave back in ’29—a woman who turned out to be a Tzenkethi saboteur—Zweller would likely have returned to the Ajax in a body bag, to say nothing of compromising the safety of the ship and her crew. Just two years later, during his second tour of duty with Captain Narth aboard the Ajax, a female Vulcan agent had recruited Zweller into Section 31, where he had come under Tabor’s direct supervision and sponsorship. A universe of opportunities, none of which ever seemed to come fast enough for him as an ordinary Starfleet officer, had opened up for him then. And he had never looked back.
And now Tabor might well be dead. Swept away, just like Captain Blaylock and the crew of the Slayton.
Zweller found coincidences hard to accept. His mind returned to his earlier query: Had Koval been responsible for the attack on Tabor as well as the deaths of his shipmates? Perhaps the Romulan had never intended to surrender the spy list. Maybe he was already back on Romulus, confident that Zweller would never survive his sojourn on Chiaros IV. Regardless, it was abundantly clear to him now that Koval had another agenda besides his deal with Section 31.
But what is it?
The vehicle ceased its shuddering, touching down with a light thump. A moment later, the guards perfunctorily removed Riker’s and Troi’s manacles and handed them thermal blankets, which the captives wrapped about their shoulders on their way to the vehicle’s rear hatchway. Still wearing his jacket, Zweller declined a blanket of his own. Then, his tricorder at the ready, he led the way outside the transport.
Because this near-Nightside region did not have the benefit of the mountains and canyons that shielded much of Chiaros IV’s habitable meridian, the howling wind struck them brutally. They had to lean into it as they walked in order to make any forward progress at all. The charcoal sky scattered the wan almost-twilight, revealing the tumble of indistinct shapes that lay ahead. As they trudged closer, those shapes resolved themselves into ruined stone walls, the remnants of dwellings, and the fossil-dry pieces of a shattered water-extraction machine. Chunks of burned, shattered masonry lay about in random heaps, like toys discarded by some colossal, tantrumprone child. The exposed bedrock, wind-scoured for countless ages, bore scorches and craters of obviously much more recent origin. Jagged flashes of ionospheric brilliance leaped across the sky, casting fleeting, irregular shadows in every direction across the detritus of unnumbered destroyed and uprooted lives.
As they walked, Riker shouted to be heard over the keening of the wind. “Is this the same village from the hologram Falhain showed us in HagratÈ?”
Zweller hadn’t seen Falhain’s presentation at the peace conference. But the rebels had made him wellacquainted with those particular—and extremely persuasive—holographic images.
“I’m not sure, Commander,” Zweller shouted back. “But does it really matter when there are hundreds more just like it?”
They came to a stop before a partially demolished wall, which appeared once to have been part of a village well. The squat ruin offered them some small respite from the raging winds. Zweller watched as Riker’s boyish face changed, settling into hard planes and angles. Troi looked physically ill. An aurora crackled far overhead, like an electrical arc jumping between the uprights of an old-fashioned Jacob’s ladder.
Zweller handed the tricorder to Riker, who immediately began scanning the wall and the surrounding terrain. The dour-eyed guards stood by quietly while Riker pored over the readouts.
The wall bore a small humanoid silhouette. A child’s shadow, rendered in a micrometer-thin layer of carbon atoms. Several other nearby structures bore similar marks.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down, Zweller thought without a scintilla of humor.
Riker’s mouth was moving. Lip-reading, Zweller thought he made out a “My God.”
Zweller shouted into the wind. “Chiarosan weaponry isn’t all ceremonial flatware, Commander. Especially among Ruardh’s people.”
Zweller paused,
smiling mirthlessly before continuing. “Sometimes those folks use
disruptors.”
Zweller could still feel the bone-deep chill even as the antigrav vehicle returned them to the rebel compound nearly an hour later. Nobody spoke until after the guards had escorted Riker and Troi back to their holding cell.
Standing beside the guard outside the cell’s forcefield, Zweller was the first to break the grim silence. “Now do you understand why I’ve decided to assist Grelun’s movement?”
Nodding, Riker said, “I understand that you see them as the local underdog. I probably would myself, in your place. But how do we know you showed us the whole story?”
“Commander, I hope you’re not implying,” Zweller said with a scowl, “that there’s any way to justify the slaughter you just saw.”
Riker shook his head. “Of course not. But how do you know the rebels aren’t the ones actually responsible for the killing? They could have staged the massacre themselves simply to discredit Ruardh’s government.”
Outside the cell, one of the guards growled and spat on the floor. “I don’t believe that, Commander,” Zweller said. “And I don’t think you do either.”
“I sense no such duplicity among these people, Will,” Troi said. “They follow such a strict code of warrior ethics that I don’t think they have the capacity to mount and maintain a deception of that sort.” She paused to look at one of the guards who stood in the corridor, and a look of surprise lit up her face before she spoke again. “In fact, Grelun’s warriors seem every bit as bound by honor as Klingons.”
Riker appeared to mull the facts over for a moment, then sighed and looked at Zweller. “All right. Maybe we ought to take this story at face value. When did all this begin?”
“Over a decade ago,” Zweller said, “when Ruardh and her council decided that the tribal ethnic minorities were too much of a drain on the planet’s extremely limited natural resources. The government started forcing the tribes farther and farther from the prime habitable zone. That should have been a death sentence. But these people were just too tough and ornery to die.
“More recently, Ruardh started worrying that the exiled tribes might complicate her initiative for Federation membership. So she ordered them liquidated, town by town, village by village. There are new massacres every few weeks, but Ruardh has managed to keep a lid on things so far by jamming whatever long-range subspace communications capabilities the rebels may have. And since her people control the orbiting transmitter, the Federation knows only what Ruardh wants us to know. If the Federation wins the referendum—and Ruardh hangs onto power—these people can’t hope to hold out for much more than another year or two. Not without help, anyway.”
Riker stroked his beard calmly, giving Zweller the impression of a man about to place a bid in a friendly game of poker. “Commander, the sooner we get back to the Enterprise, the sooner we might be able to provide that help.”
“Grelun has promised to release all of us after the referendum,” Zweller said. “That includes the three of us and my shuttle crew.”
Troi shook her head. “Even if the vote goes the way Grelun wants it to, we’d all still be stuck here for the next three days, unable to help anybody. And if what we saw in the village is any indication, a lot more people could die during that time.”
Excellent point, Zweller thought, taking care to keep his mind opaque to Troi’s empathic senses. He wondered how many more Chiarosan children might have to pay with their lives for his adherence to prearranged mission timetables. After all, if they were all to escape to the Enterprise sooner rather than later, there might be time to expose Ruardh’s crimes to the general populace—and to the Federation Council—before the planet-wide referendum.
Zweller assumed that the vote would, in any event, still go against the Federation because of its earlier failure to broker peace between Ruardh and Falhain. But that also meant, as Zweller reasoned it, that an early departure could not disrupt the bargain he’d made with Koval on behalf of Section 31. Therefore, his mission objective would still be accomplished even if he and the other prisoners were to leave right now.
Turning away from the
guard, Zweller whispered, “Let me see what I can do.”
After the visit to the destroyed village, no one had thought to relieve Zweller of the tricorder Grelun had returned to him. Zweller had maintained possession of it by leaving it attached to his belt, right out in the open. He had, in effect, hidden it in plain sight. The rebels apparently didn’t see the point of confiscating something that he was clearly making no effort whatsoever to conceal.
While Grelun hadn’t exactly given Zweller the run of the Army of Light compound, the rebel leader had allowed him considerable freedom of movement in exchange for his tactical advice. That, and for helping the Chiarosans use the replicator salvaged from the Archimedes to create weapons and spare components for the freedom fighters’ dozen or so battered fighter craft. Zweller thought of his surviving Slayton crewmates, reflecting that Roget would be extremely upset if he ever discovered just how badly maintained the ships that captured the Archimedes had been; the Starfleet shuttle could easily have held its own against them.
During the eight days or so he had spent among the Chiarosan rebels so far—it was awkward expressing time in terms of days on a world without sunrises and sunsets—Zweller had come to feel that these grim warriors had become at least tolerant of his presence. Many of them now genuinely seemed to like him, and were no doubt grateful for his help.
Thus Zweller was unsupervised when, less than ten minutes after parting company with Riker and Troi, he entered an empty alcove. Here he opened a wallmounted panel through which part of the compound’s optical data network ran. Having been designed for Chiarosans, the panel was quite high, forcing him to stand on tiptoe, his arms stretched uncomfortably above his head. Alert for the sound of approaching Chiarosans, he worked as quickly as possible, patching the tricorder into the microminiaturized ODN terminal node he had installed four days previously; he’d left it there while ostensibly helping one of the rebel engineers run a diagnostic on the base’s communications system. Forcing contemporary Starfleet hardware to work reliably alongside the Chiarosans’ systems—most of which appeared to be analogous to Federation technology from the late twenty-second century—had been a bit of a challenge, despite his extensive training in obsolete technologies. But core technological principles rarely changed much, even after two centuries.
Using the tricorder’s input pads, Zweller navigated through a complicated series of hierarchical icons. This complex command sequence was intended to surreptitiously isolate this particular comm terminal from the rest of the base’s computer system. At the same time, it would attempt to seize control of a portion of the backup comm system using every possible clearance code, running the code sequences at nearly a billion cycles per second. After each attempt, the program in the tricorder would erase all evidence that it had ever tried to jimmy its way inside the facility’s systems.
A tense minute elapsed while the small display on Zweller’s tricorder repeatedly flashed a single word: WORKING. Two minutes passed. A bead of cold sweat crept down the small of his back, chilling him. Three minutes.
Then the display gave way to a cheerful green: COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY: ACCESS APPROVED.
Yes!
Zweller’s hands were now becoming slick with sweat from the effort of holding his body in such an unnatural posture. As carefully as he could, he entered the next sequence of icons, a grouping even more complex than the previous one. The idea behind this particular command set was to get inside the base’s security grid. Were he actually to try to use the base’s transmitter before doing that, he would more than likely trigger a security alarm.
It would take only a few moments to send the Enterprise a burst of data containing a set of detailed instructions, including the coordinates of each of the holding cells relative to the location of the rebels’ subspace transmitter. Assuming that the transmitter could pierce the local static, Johnny and his crew would trace the signal to its source, establish its location, and then apply his coordinate correction data to calculate the positions of each of the imprisoned Starfleet officers. While Zweller was well aware that the transporters aboard the Enterprise could not beam anyone directly off the planet— there was far too much atmospheric ionization to permit that—he was reasonably certain that a low-flying shuttlecraft could pull it off, with a little luck.
He decided that he would preprogram the holding cells’ forcefields to come down in six hours. Six hours would give Picard ample time to get a shuttle close enough to the compound to beam every Starfleet captive to safety. And because even the Chiarosan government probably couldn’t intercept such a brief, tightly focused subspace transmission, the rebel compound’s location would remain beyond the reach of Ruardh’s military machine.
It was a win–win scenario. Zweller grinned at his own cleverness.
WORKING, flashed the tricorder as it continued trying countless security-grid access codes. Another crimsonblinking minute passed. Then two.
Three minutes. More sweat flowed, this time stinging his eyes. He brushed it away with his palm, stifling a curse.
Four minutes. Why the hell was this taking so long?
He heard the deliberate clip-clop of a soldier’s boots. The sound approached, then withdrew, then ceased entirely.
His hands had begun to shake. I’m getting too old for this.
Then, in green: SECURITY GRID: ACCESS APPROVED. The muscles in his calves and shoulders were aching from his awkward, upward-reaching stance. His fingers had become slippery with sweat and his arms were growing numb. Not wanting to risk revealing his presence by using the tricorder’s voice interface, he began scrolling and entering the icons that would transmit his data-burst to the Enterprise.
The tricorder’s display flashed an interrogative icon. Then he saw what he had done. He had inadvertently mistaken one icon hierarchy for another. It was the equivalent of making a typographical error on a computer equipped with an old-style keyboard interface.
He began scrolling and entering commands again, more slowly this time. The shaking of his hands intensified. Muscle fatigue was making his right leg begin to shimmy. He entered the final icon in the command sequence.
TRANSMITTING.
He never heard the
footfalls of the stealthy Chiarosan guard whose rough hands seized
his shoulder half a second later.
Will Riker was surprised when a pair of very angry, very large Chiarosan warriors suddenly marched him and Troi from their cell, only to escort them into another similar one located a fair distance away.
He was even more surprised to see Commander Cortin Zweller awaiting them there, already confined in the cell. Zweller appeared to have lost his favored guest status; his tricorder was missing and his face bore several bruises that hadn’t been there when they had parted company some twenty minutes earlier.
Riker found it difficult to suppress a wry smile. So, evidently, did Deanna.
“I take it that Grelun has declined your request for our early release,” Riker said blandly.
Zweller responded with a humorless chuckle. “ Vehemently. I suppose he moved all the other prisoners, too, once he suspected that I’d transmitted their transporter coordinates to the Enterprise.”
A surge of hope swelled within Riker’s chest. He made certain his back was to the guard standing on the other side of the forcefield before he responded. “And did you?”
Zweller shrugged, then spoke in a barely audible whisper. “I think so, but there’s no way to be sure. But I am certain about one thing—I managed to sabotage the security grid before I got caught. I don’t think they’ll discover it until after it’s too late.”
“And what will that accomplish?” Troi wanted to know.
Zweller absently touched a bruise on his forehead and winced. “The detention-cell forcefields should come down in a little less than six hours. I tried to send a burst-message asking the Enterprise to send a shuttle for us then. If they can get to within a few kilometers of us, they should be able to beam us all out of here, even through all the atmospheric interference.”
“If your message got through, then the captain will get us that shuttle,” Riker said quietly. He needed to buoy his spirits. This was a slim hope, but it was something.
“Fat lot of good it’ll do us if Grelun’s moved everybody around,” Zweller said. “The shuttle crew won’t know where to try for a transporter lock. And they won’t have a lot of time to run scans if Grelun scrambles his fighter craft to intercept them.”
“I’m afraid I have more bad news,” Troi said, her eyes closing.
“I don’t see how things can get much worse now,” Riker said.
“I do. I’m picking up extremely strong emotions from Grelun. He no longer has any intention of releasing us.” Her eyes came open then, twin pools of apprehension. “He’s furious, Will. If the referendum doesn’t go the way he wants it to, Grelun intends to declare total war on his opponents. He’ll probably start by executing all of his prisoners, and then . . .” she trailed off.
“And then?” Zweller prompted.
“The rebels have left Chiarosan civilians out of the conflict so far, but—”
Riker finished the thought for her. “—but the gloves will be off if the pro-Federation side wins.”
“Judging from the ugly state of Grelun’s emotions,” Troi said, “you can expect a bloodbath. A long, drawnout planetary civil war.”
Zweller smiled. “You’re overlooking an important detail, Commander Troi. The pro-Federation side doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance on Vulcan of winning the referendum.”
Riker shot a grave look at Zweller. “I might be inclined to agree with you, Commander. Except for the one thing that you seem to have overlooked.”
“Which is?”
Riker pointed toward the stone ceiling. “Which is that the man commanding the Enterprise is Jean-Luc Picard. The man who served as Klingon Chancellor Gowron’s Arbiter of Succession. Thanks to the captain’s diplomacy, the Klingon civil war lasted for months instead of years.”
Zweller’s smile faltered then. “Diplomacy wasn’t his strong suit when I knew him, Commander.”
“It’s never a good idea to underestimate Captain Picard,” Troi said.
Zweller looked up at them both. “Then for everyone’s sake, you’d both better hope he fails in a big way this time.”
Never during the nine years he had so far spent serving alongside Captain Picard had Will Riker thought he would find himself agreeing with such a sentiment.
Now, he had no other option.