Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night Read online

  Along with those motivations, Sisko had also recently come to realize that an element of abnegation, perhaps even of self-punishment, played a part in his social detachment. To his surprise, his sessions with Counselor Althouse had yielded positive results, not only for Sisko himself, but for his crew, who served under a commanding officer who over the past couple of months had become, by degrees, more forthcoming and more approachable. With his change in demeanor, the morale aboard ship had improved noticeably.

  Which is all Anxo wanted, Sisko thought. The ship’s exec, Anxo Rogeiro, had come aboard Robinson at the same time as Sisko, the two men replacing officers lost during the Borg invasion. Rogeiro seemed to acclimate to the new crew quickly, while Sisko willfully held himself apart from the ship’s complement. After seven or eight months, the first officer confronted his captain, essentially challenging Sisko to tear down the impregnable wall he’d put up between himself and the people who served with him. Eventually, that challenge transformed into a demand that the captain speak with one of the ship’s counselors—a demand that Rogeiro promised to formalize if necessary. Not wanting to have to explain himself to Starfleet Command, Sisko relented.

  And Anxo was right to do what he did, Sisko thought. Counselor Althouse had helped—and continued to help—the captain face the actions he’d taken in leaving his wife and child, and to understand how the course he’d chosen related to the reclusiveness he’d developed. Sisko couldn’t do anything about the former without putting at risk the lives of the people he loved most, but he discovered that he could do something about the latter.

  The door chime beckoned a second time, and Sisko shook off his reverie. “Come in,” he called across the main room of his quarters. Out in space, beyond the ports, stars appeared to hurtle past as Robinson warped along its patrol route beside the Romulan border.

  The doors parted, revealing the man of whom Sisko had just been thinking. Dressed in civilian clothes—beige slacks and a violet, long-sleeved shirt—Commander Rogeiro stepped forward into the captain’s cabin. A bit taller than Sisko, he had a swarthy complexion, with black, wavy hair and dark eyes. At that late hour of the ship’s artificial day, his face showed the heavy shadow of his potential beard.

  “Mister Rogeiro,” Sisko said. “You’re up late.” The time had just passed midnight, well into the ship’s gamma shift.

  “I’m not the only one,” Rogeiro said, indicating the captain himself. The first officer crossed the room until he stood opposite Sisko over the long, low table in front of the sofa. Behind Rogeiro, the doors slid closed with a whisper. He pointed toward the padd in Sisko’s hands. “Business or pleasure?”

  Sisko held up the padd, but kept its display facing away from his exec. “Neither,” he said, and he reached to deactivate the device. On the screen, a photograph of Sisko and his daughter vanished. Although his professional relationship with Rogeiro had improved considerably over the past few months, and even though the two men had begun to develop something of a friendship, they had yet to discuss Sisko’s home life on Bajor, and what he’d left behind—though not for want of trying on Rogeiro’s part. “So what can I do for you, Commander?” Sisko leaned forward and casually set his padd down on the table, wanting to invite no further questions about what he’d been doing.

  “I just couldn’t sleep,” Rogeiro said, “so I thought maybe I’d try to tire myself out.” He spoke with a slight accent, a shibboleth that identified him as a native of Portugal.

  “What did you have in mind?” Sisko asked, though he suspected he already knew.

  “I thought maybe you might like to spar,” Rogeiro said. He hiked a thumb up over his shoulder, apparently motioning in the general direction of the ship’s gymnasium.

  Sisko smiled. “Feel like hitting your captain in the face and not standing court-martial?” Over the past month or so, Sisko had taken to accepting Rogeiro’s invitations to join him in the ring for some light boxing. At first, he wondered if his first officer cleverly sought to use the cover of athletics to directly take out his frustrations with Sisko, but a quick review of Rogeiro’s records showed that he’d taken up the sport years earlier, at Starfleet Academy.

  “Punching my commanding officer with impunity isn’t the main reason,” Rogeiro said, also smiling. “That’s just a bonus.”

  “I bet it is,” Sisko agreed. He leaned back on the sofa. “The problem is, I am tired. I don’t think I’d be able to give you much of a fight.”

  “Even better,” Rogeiro said. “If you can’t defend yourself or hit me, then I’ll really get exhausted landing all my punches.”

  Sisko let out a short burst of sound: “Hah!” As he’d begun to get to know Rogeiro, he’d come to appreciate his wry sense of humor. “You’re not exactly selling me on your invitation, Commander.”

  “Oh, well,” Rogeiro said, shrugging and taking one of the two comfortable chairs in front of the table. “How about some good conversation over a nightcap then?”

  “Now that sounds like a much better idea to me,” Sisko said. He rose from the sofa and started across the room toward the replicator. “What can I get for you?”

  “Actually, maybe we should go down to the Black.”

  Sisko stopped and turned back to face his first officer. The captain wanted to decline, wanted to stay in his quarters rather than accompany Rogeiro down to Tavern on the Black. Situated on Deck 11 in the forward section of Robinson’s saucer, the ship’s lounge served as the primary social venue for the crew. Although less reticent than when he’d first come aboard, Sisko still didn’t feel entirely comfortable among the people with whom he served, particularly in social settings. Still, Rogeiro continued to push him in that direction, as did Counselor Althouse and, often enough, Sisko himself. “All right,” he finally said.

  “Fantástico,” said Rogeiro, offering up his satisfaction in what Sisko assumed to be Portuguese. He rose, and the two men headed for the door. “I hear that Lejuris has created another of her amazing concoctions, this one with Siluvian bubble—”

  “Bridge to Captain Sisko,” came the voice of Ensign Radickey over the comm system.

  Sisko and Rogeiro stopped immediately. Radickey, the captain knew, currently crewed the ship’s primary communications console. “Go ahead, Ensign.”

  “Captain, we’ve received a transmission from Starfleet Command,” Radickey said. “It’s designated priority one.”

  Rogeiro glanced at Sisko, the amused expression the first officer had worn just seconds earlier replaced by one of concern. “Route it to my quarters, Ensign,” said the captain, already moving toward his desk on the other side of the room. He gestured for Rogeiro to follow.

  “Aye, sir,” said Radickey.

  “Sisko out.” He sat down at his desk, and saw that the emblem of Starfleet Command had already appeared on the computer interface there. Rogeiro remained standing to one side, peering at the display over the captain’s shoulder. Sisko tapped a control, and the message began to play. Where the logo had been, a familiar face materialized, its narrow shape and sharp features softened somewhat by the blond tresses that framed it. Sisko noticed that since he had last seen the admiral, strands of silver had begun to weave their way through her hair.

  “Captain Sisko, this is Admiral Nechayev,” she said. “This morning, a pair of explosions ripped through Utopia Planitia. Casualties are thirty-one dead, nearly a hundred injured.”

  Sisko glanced up at his first officer, whose expression hardened at the news. Sisko himself momentarily felt the horrible burden of responsibility, as if his posting to Utopia Planitia a decade and a half ago contributed directly to the disaster. The Prophets’ warning to him and their nonlinear existence—and for a time, his own nonlinear existence—occurred to him, but he shook off his feeling of culpability as illogical.

  “Starfleet Command reported the incident to the news services as an industrial accident,” the admiral continued. “It wasn’t.”

  Again, a shared look of concern passed
between captain and first officer.

  “The first explosion was triggered in order to hide the theft of sensitive data from the station’s main computer by an apparent spy, while the second masked his escape,” Nechayev explained. “Sensor scans of the region lead us to believe that a cloaked vessel retrieved the spy and is now trying to flee Federation space.” The admiral paused, as though her words to that point had been only preamble to what would come next. “Captain, the spy stole schematics for the quantum slipstream drive, and we believe he’s making his escape aboard a Romulan vessel. I don’t have to tell you that, since Starfleet’s devastating losses during the Borg invasion, the only thing that’s allowed us to maintain the balance of power with the Typhon Pact has been the slipstream drive. If we lose that tactical advantage, the Federation becomes vulnerable.”

  Vulnerable, Sisko thought, not without bitterness. Whatever primitive compulsions he might have had to take up arms had been well sated during his years in Starfleet: the last Tzenkethi War, the Battle of Wolf 359, the Dominion War, the Borg assault. If continually forced to fight, would the day finally come when the Federation would not prevail?

  “With Robinson’s position at the Romulan border, your orders are to actively search for the vessel carrying the stolen plans and prevent it from leaving Federation space with those plans,” said Nechayev. “But that ship was able to penetrate our defenses because we believe it’s utilizing a new type of cloak, a phasing cloak. Phase alteration technology not only provides for better concealment, but also allows a ship to pass through normal, unphased matter. This is obviously a recent advancement by the Romulans, and one we need to learn how to detect in real time. I’m including the sensor readings we took at Utopia Planitia; have your engineers begin working on the problem at once.”

  Again, Nechayev paused, and Sisko anticipated what her final orders would be. “Captain, you are not authorized to enter the Neutral Zone, which would constitute an act of war and could lead us into a conflict we’re not prepared to fight. But as long as you remain in Federation space, Starfleet Command approves the use of whatever means necessary to stop that Romulan ship.

  “I want a status report every three hours,” the admiral concluded. “Good luck, Captain.” The message ended with the reappearance of the Starfleet logo.

  “‘Whatever means necessary,’” Rogeiro quoted. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It isn’t,” Sisko said.

  “I thought the new praetor—Kamemor?—didn’t hate the Federation,” Rogeiro said. “I thought she was supposed to be more of a moderate.”

  “I don’t know,” Sisko said, thinking of his encounter with Donatra. Fifteen or so months earlier, the self-styled empress had forced a schism in the Romulan Star Empire, taking control of many of the breadbasket worlds and calling it the Imperial Romulan State. Empress Donatra clashed with Praetor Tal’Aura, and when their struggles for supremacy finally ended, both wound up dead, with the Empire reunited under the leadership of doyenne Gell Kamemor. “The notion of a moderate Romulan might be an oxymoron,” Sisko said, “but even if it’s not, there’s always the Typhon Pact to consider.”

  “Right,” said Rogeiro. “It’s not as though we don’t have adversaries there.” Along with the Romulans, the year-old alliance included the Breen, the Gorn, the Kinshaya, the Tholians, and the Tzenkethi—most of whom the Federation had come into armed conflict with in the past.

  Sisko stood up. “I’m heading up to the bridge to initiate a search grid,” he told his first officer. “Take the admiral’s sensor readings down to engineering. I want Commander Relkdahz to start working immediately on detecting the new cloak.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sisko strode to the door of his cabin, Rogeiro falling in beside him. Out in the corridor, they moved off in separate directions. Sisko had only taken a few steps before his first officer called after him. “Captain?” he said, his tone uncertain.

  Sisko stopped and turned. Rogeiro moved back over to face him directly. “Sir, we don’t even know that the Romulan vessel is heading back to the Empire. It could be making its way to any of the Typhon Pact states. And even if it is headed for the Empire, how are we supposed to find a lone vessel out here, especially one that’s hiding behind a new type of cloak, one we don’t even know how to detect?”

  “I don’t know how we’re supposed to find it, Anxo,” Sisko said, fully aware of the enormously difficult nature of the tasks he and his crew had been handed, “but we’re sure as hell going to try.”

  3

  From across the chamber, Praetor Gell Kamemor studied what she could only regard as her throne. Ornately carved from rich, textured wood, its tall back clad in gold filigree, it sat atop a high platform, elevating it above the lustrous black floor. It directly faced a set of massive wooden doors that allowed visitors admission into the audience chamber, ensuring that callers would see it—and presumably its occupant—immediately upon entry. As with the throne, elaborate scrollwork embellished the doors, though they had not been decorated with gold, but rather inlaid with green-traced ruatinite.

  Her back to the doors, the leader of the Romulan people drew in a long breath in the comfortably warm room, then exhaled slowly, preparing herself for whatever news would shortly arrive. After the death of Tal’Aura not even a hundred days earlier, the Senate had elevated Kamemor to the praetorship from among their ranks. She accepted the position reluctantly, just as she had when her clan, the Ortikant, appointed her to replace their prior representative in the Senate, Xarian Dor, after he succumbed to a fatal disease. When Tal’Aura later died from that same virulent illness, many drew the obvious conclusion that the two—the younger senator and the older praetor—had been involved in a clandestine relationship. Kamemor remained unconvinced, though the isolated and specific casualties of the lethal disease did give her pause.

  Several decades past her centenary, deep into a full life pervaded by service to the Empire—as a university instructor, military liaison, stateswoman, metropolitan administrator, and territorial governor—Kamemor had previously retired to a life that mixed peaceful contemplation and robust activity. When the calls came for her to return to politics, first as a senator and then as praetor, she thought each time to demur. In both cases, under the familial pressures of the Ortikant, and out of her own sense of civic obligation and her strong desire to bring much-needed calm to the Empire, she relented. With her wife and son long since perished, little would have prevented her from once again engaging in the affairs of state, other than her own disinclination to do so.

  And this, she thought, still looking at the throne, is what makes me averse to politics. She found it objectionable enough that the collective Romulan psyche included a chauvinism that had too many times made enemies out of other species. For so many Romulan politicians, though, holding governmental office exacerbated their natural patriotic bias into a sense of overblown self-importance. Kamemor understood the argument that the ruling class needed to exalt itself in order to inspire confidence among the masses, and to convince them that the best of their race led them. Too often, though, the self-aggrandizement of administrators and governors, of senators and praetors, resulted in those leaders making choices that indulged their own egos or inflated their personal wealth, rather than promoting the general welfare of the people. How many times had the praetor and the Senate marched Romulan citizens off to a war not absolutely necessary to the continuation of the Empire?

  Kamemor pulled her gaze from the throne and peered around the rest of the circular chamber that she had inherited from her predecessor. Its opulence bespoke her lofty station. Braces of royal blue columns circumnavigated the periphery of the space, the alcoves between them set deep into walls of gleaming volcanic stone. Ancient and celebrated works of art dressed the recesses, all of them evoking a nationalistic theme. High above, tying them together, a spectacular mural filled the ceiling. An expertly rendered copy of Dorin Zhagan’s famed Nascence, it depicted a powerful raptor asc
ending from a dark wood and into the sky, where it soared above a pair of towering peaks. As a woman with a great appreciation for art, Kamemor recognized the skill of the painter, but its theme failed to impress her, instead reminding her once more of the too-common belief of her people in Romulan exceptionalism. As long as she served as praetor, she vowed to battle that low form of communal egomania.

  In her own way, Kamemor had sought to diminish the lavishness of the praetorial audience chamber. Though not entirely comfortable removing the artwork long ensconced there, she chose to add her own touches to the decor. Off to one side stood a small, circular table, surrounded by four decidedly plain chairs. Of greater impact to the interior design of the space, a large, conference-style table consumed a significant portion of the room’s open center. As well, Kamemor kept the lighting bright, banishing the impressions of mystery and grandeur brought by shadows and instead contributing an air of workmanlike starkness to the environs.

  A midrange chime suddenly resounded through the chamber. Kamemor stepped away from the doors and turned to await the entrance of her visitors. After a moment, the doors swung effortlessly open, and two men stepped into the room, accompanied by a pair of armed sentries, a man and a woman, both uhlans by rank. The two officers scanned the room, then withdrew back to their posts, pulling the doors closed behind them. The men waited for the praetor to speak.

  In the short time that Kamemor had held her high office, the work seemed to rejuvenate her sister’s grandson, whom she had appointed proconsul. Though several decades her junior, Anlikar Ventel’s mop of gray hair and his wizened face always made him appear older than she. They shared a vague family resemblance, most noticeably in the gray hue of their eyes. When Kamemor approached him about joining her in the upper stratum of government, he accepted with vigor, noting his excitement about the new praetor’s personal tendency to seek out all opinions when deciding an issue. So far, in a small sample size, Ventel had disagreed with Kamemor on a number of issues, and he’d already succeeded on one occasion in convincing her to adopt his position over her initial stance.