Star Trek: TNG: Cold Equations II: Silent Weapons (10 page)

His answer was met by narrowed eyes and a glum frown. “Can you be more specific?”

“I can. I choose not to be.”

The lawyer tapped a fat index finger on the tabletop. “Data, you’re in serious legal trouble, and it’s only going to get worse if you don’t cooperate with me. The JAG office tells me you met with Starfleet Intelligence section chief Hilar Tohm twice during your stay on Orion, and that she helped you acquire copies of top-secret files from the Bank of Orion. Is this true?”

“It is.”

“What was in the files she obtained for you?”

He knew his next answer would not be well received, but that could not be helped. “I am sorry, counselor, but I believe you lack the requisite security clearance for that information.”

The Grazerite made a fist, closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Then he stared at Data. “Commander, we don’t have time for this. Tell me what was in those files.”

“I will not. Perhaps you can ask Commander Tohm to share that information with you.”

“Excuse me?”

He wondered why his lawyer hadn’t already pursued this line of inquiry. “If you doubt my description of my business on Orion, speak with Commander Tohm. She can corroborate my explanation, and attest to the personal nature of the intelligence she shared with me.”

Peshtal-Azda regarded Data with a long, silent glare. “Commander Tohm is dead.”

In just four words, the true scope of Data’s legal predicament began to come into focus. He hoped his initial assumption was wrong, but he needed to be sure. “How did she die?”

“She was murdered in her apartment, here inside the embassy compound. Medical scans have confirmed her time of death was between five and six hours before your arrest.”

“Does the JAG office currently consider me a suspect in her murder?”

“Let’s just say you’re definitely a ‘person of interest.’ Especially since, roughly two hours before your arrest, the energy signature of a Soong-type android was detected trying to break into the Bank of Orion.” He raised one bushy eyebrow with accusatory flair. “Do you happen to have a ready explanation for
that,
Commander?”

“No.” The first sickening sensation of fear twisted in Data’s gut and filled his mind with panicked loops of questions. “I have no explanation for that whatsoever.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” The lawyer put away his padd, closed his case, and stood up. “I know you could escape. Don’t. Stay here, and don’t talk to anyone except me, about anything.” He knocked on the door. A guard on the other side unlocked and opened it. Peshtal-Azda grumbled under his breath as he left. “Why must I get all the
interesting
cases?”

8

From across the lab, Konar took note of Hain’s hunched posture over her console, her defensive, pulled-in body language. Her head was down, and though she must have heard his steps as he approached, she didn’t turn to observe him as she normally did. Even when she was engrossed in her work, she rarely exhibited a focus this intense. It boded ill.

He stopped behind her shoulder. “I need a progress report on the Orion operation.”

She cringed, then looked back over her shoulder. “It wasn’t my fault.”

The update was off to an even worse start than Konar had feared. He’d already been forced to contend with unrealistic schedules, unrelenting superiors, and untested technology; now he could add a paranoid colleague to his legion of impediments. “What happened?”

“The break-in at the bank failed.” Hain called up multiple screens of synchronized data set for accelerated playback. “This was recorded during the mission. We followed the plan the Spetzkar sent us, to the last detail.” She pointed at a map of the street grid in the Orion capital. “The team approached through the underground passage, as directed. They cut through the outer barrier, and everything seemed to be on schedule. Then Dolon hit some kind of energy field here, just inside the bank’s sublevel.” One of her screens became a jumble of code and static. “He took some heavy damage from a feedback pulse inside the field. Half his body’s motivators are fried, and there’s damage in his sensory hardware.”

Konar studied the mission logs and was impressed by their tremendous clarity and the wealth of raw information the team had been able to relay back to the lab, even from such a great distance. “What happened next?”

Hain skipped ahead in the data playback. “The team withdrew and used preplanned escape route six. One hour and nine minutes later, they returned to the safehouse.”

“With Dolon?” Konar asked. Hain nodded. “Is the damage reparable?”

“No, not with the limited resources they have.” She looked up at him, and the pitch of her voice climbed, her anxiety detectable even in the garbled noise from her vocoder. “It wasn’t my fault, sir. The mission protocols from the Spetzkar expressly forbade me from modifying the plan in any way. I couldn’t add precautions or countermand questionable tactics. All I could do was walk them into a trap. I didn’t even have the option of aborting the mission.”

She was so excitable.
If only she could master her passions,
Konar thought,
she could go far. But she suffers from the curse of short-term thinking.
“No one will hold you accountable for the mission’s outcome. I assure you, the Spetzkar design these operations with great care and attention to detail. As long as you followed the protocol, you have no cause for concern.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir: there is cause for concern.” She summoned another screen of technical data. “Dolon’s sensor-blocking circuit shorted out on contact with the energy field. Before his power cell failed, he was exposed to the bank’s sensors for several seconds. During that time, he would have emitted an energy signature unique to Soong-type androids.” Her hands moved with frantic grace across her console, calling up more and more information from various sources. “The Orion police don’t seem to know what the readings mean, but they shared them with the Gorn and Starfleet ships in orbit. I don’t know if the Gorn have accurate intel on the androids, but Starfleet is almost certain to recognize it.”

Konar saw her point. “You’re right, they will. And if we can’t repair Dolon, we can’t risk bringing him back on line. The moment he powers up, he’d lead Starfleet straight to the other three androids. Have the rest of the team dismantle him and melt him down.”

“Destroy him? But that’ll leave only three to complete the rest of the mission.”

“I’m aware of that. But under the circumstances, we have no choice. At best, he’s dead weight; at worst, he’s a liability that could expose the rest of the team.”

Hain regarded her wall of screens with a posture that conveyed despair. “How are we supposed to rewrite the rest of the mission profile to work with only three androids?”

“That’s not our concern. I’ll file my report with Command and let them deal with the loss of Dolon. As soon as they send back a revised mission plan, we’ll proceed.”

Even translated, Hain’s reply was rife with bitterness. “Let’s hope their next plan proves more successful than the last one.”

He couldn’t tell her that the last plan had been more successful than it had appeared, and that it had achieved every one of its true objectives—none of which had been known to Hain. Instead, he told her the only thing that he could: “Begin preparations for Phase Two.” He walked toward the long corridor that led from the lab to his quarters, but before he started down the passageway, he turned back. “Hain.” She turned to look at him, and he saluted her with a subtle lift of his mask’s snout. “Good work.” She accepted the compliment without a word and acknowledged his praise by returning to her labors.

There was still much to be done on Orion, Konar knew. Before it was over, he and Hain would be called upon to accomplish a feat without precedent in local history, one that would send political aftershocks throughout all of known space. And despite the enormity of what they had been asked to do, he knew that if the mission went as intended, their true roles would not be remembered by history. In the annals of the galaxy, the two of them would not merit so much as a footnote. Despite the river of blood they would be compelled to shed, they would die forgotten.

But the Breen Confederacy would live on. It would be remembered forever.

•   •   •

From her first step inside the uplink center, Hain felt the intense, dry heat that filled the dim room. The culprit was the transmitter, a bizarre construction of black crystal infused with indigo fires unlike anything else Hain had ever seen. In addition to making possible the control of their androids across vast distances, it bled heat like a dying star.

Arrayed at ninety-degree intervals around the transmitter were four uplink pods, bulky cylinders more than two meters long that extended from the transmitter like spokes on a wheel. Each gray cocoon was barnacled with subsystems—heat exchangers, power regulators, feedback buffers, and dozens more. Hain moved from one pod to the next, checking to make sure they were functioning correctly and that their signal outputs were correct and within tolerances.

At the foot of each pod was a primary control panel. Hain activated the panels on Pods One, Two, and Three as she walked the perimeter of the circular room, stopping to verify that the return signals from the androids all were being received and processed with total fidelity.

Visual and auditory signals were the easiest to confirm. Observing the team members through one another’s points of view, she could see that none of them had any obvious cosmetic damage. They all appeared to be perfectly normal humanoids—a male Orion, a female human, and a male Trill. By contrast, the team’s tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses were harder for her to quantify remotely. The best Hain could do was confirm that the signals were transiting the pods’ preprocessors and emerging unchanged.
So far, so good.

She averted her eyes as she passed the dark and deactivated Pod Four.

Her uniform’s thermal regulator activated, and she felt a soothing rush of coolness circulate through its sleeves and pants, into her gloves and boots, and best of all inside her helmet. Although she wasn’t nearly as sensitive to heat as the Amoniri, she disliked perspiring inside the armor she was required to wear at all times, except when she was alone in her quarters. Her pulse slowed as her body temperature cooled, and she relaxed herself with a deep breath.

On the far side of the room from its airlock, which protected its entrance, was an operator’s master console with a chair. Hain settled into the seat, made a final check of the uplink’s nodes, and opened a channel to her agents. “Berro. Olar. Sair. Do you all copy?”

The team’s lone remaining female answered first.
“Sair here.”

“This is Olar. I read you.”

“Berro, affirmative.”

They sounded in good spirits. That was encouraging. “All your numbers check out at this end. How do you three feel? Any anomalies after that run-in at the bank?”

“Negative,”
Sair said.
“Self-diagnostics came up clean. But we can’t wake up Dolon.”

It was time to break the bad news to the team. “Dolon’s gone. He took too much damage from the energy field, and the feedback pulse cooked his brain.”

Berro asked,
“So, what now?”

“Disassemble his body into as many parts as possible, and use the molecular acid packs in his field kit to melt him down. We can’t let his body be found, and we can’t risk you slowing down by taking it with you. It’s dead weight now. Get rid of it.”

Her order met with skepticism from Olar.
“What about his parts that won’t melt down?”

“Break them down with the sonic drill and dump them in a river. Or a sewer. But get rid of them, and make certain they won’t be found. Understood?” The operatives acknowledged the order. “All right. After you finish that, I should have new orders for you. Signing off.”

She terminated her link to the trio and observed for a few minutes until they began breaking down Dolon’s now useless body and preparing it for dissolution. It was going to be a slow and tedious process, and Hain had no desire to keep watching. Satisfied that the team was on mission and still fully operational despite the setback at the bank, she reset the master panel and uplink pods’ monitors to standby and headed for the exit.

Inside the airlock, the plunge in temperature sent a chill down her back. Her uniform’s regulator, as usual, was slow to adapt to such a rapid change in environment. She shivered as she tapped her security code into the airlock’s keypad, opening the door that led back to the main area of the lab.
Why can’t the SRD task a few scientists with improving these uniforms?

It was a rhetorical question, but as she glanced at her regular duty station, she was sure she saw the answer. Visual feeds from Berro, Olar, and Sair showed three overlapping perspectives on the coldhearted dismemberment of their comrade. Dolon’s body had represented a significant investment in terms of materials, labor, and research, and now it was being tossed away as garbage. How many other technologies could have been developed for what that had cost? How many more people throughout the Confederacy could have been fed?