The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek (23 page)

“The Ryns?” Halak’s voice registered his surprise, and Garrett saw his eyes shutter, his face close, like containment doors slamming down during a warp core breach. “What do the Ryns have to do with anything?”

“A great deal, I think. After your Ryn mission, you were removed from the
Barker,
weren’t you?”

“No,” said Halak. “I
requested
a transfer. Captain Connors agreed with my reasons.”

“And those were?”

“Captain Connors understood that some of the crew might look at me differently.”

“And why would that be?”

Halak flushed a deep crimson. “I think it’s all in the record, Lieutenant.”

“Yes. Why don’t you tell us again anyway?”

“Because of my actions in the space around Ryn III, two of my crewmates died. If you’ve read my record, then you know that a formal inquiry was held and I was cleared of any culpability. Still, I was the first officer. Those men died on my watch. I would have died, too, but I didn’t. I knew that it would be hard for some of the crew to work well with me, given the circumstances.”

“Pardon me for seeming flip or naïve,” said Burke, “but if you were cleared, Commander, why did you think you had to leave? People
do
die in the course of their duties. It’s always regrettable when this happens, but still their deaths weren’t your fault.” She paused, probably for effect. “Were they?”

Halak’s jaw firmed. “No. But just because I know that
intellectually
doesn’t mean that others might not view it that way. I had my reasons for wanting a transfer. Captain Connors agreed with them.”

“Well,
we
don’t know what they were. Why don’t you tell us?”

Garrett said, “This is going somewhere, Burke.” Not asking.

“Yes, Captain, it is.”

“Well, instead of beating around the bush, why don’t you tie it up for me?”

“Of course, Captain. The tie-in is this: red ice.”

“Red ice?” Garrett scowled. “I’m not following you, Lieutenant.”

“Captain, we all know that both the Orion Syndicate and the Asfar Qatala are vying for control of distribution of red ice. We know that both crime syndicates are based on Farius Prime. It is also a fact that Commander Halak’s ostensible mission to Ryn III was to make contact with a middleman for the Orion Syndicate.”

“Captain,” said Halak.

Garrett held up a hand to stop him. “Burke, you’re not telling me something I don’t already know. This is a command concern. I knew about this when Halak requested a transfer; I knew about his mission to Ryn III, and I knew he’d been asked to investigate red ice distribution. So just what, exactly, are you suggesting? That Commander Halak’s previous encounter with the Ryns explains this? Ties in?”

Burke clasped her hands together. “Yes. Commander Halak’s primary goal was not to visit some old family friend. She’s another lie in a string of lies. But red ice is real, and I believe that Commander Halak did his job on Ryn III very well. I believe that he made contact with the Orion Syndicate on Ryn III; that he made a deal. ...”

Halak was up and out of his seat. “That’s not true!” He brought his fist down on the table. “That is
not
true!”

Burke talked over him. “And that Commander Halak’s involvement became known to the Asfar Qatala, and they moved to eliminate the competition.”

“That’s a
lie!
I’ve made my report,” Halak said. “I had nothing more to do with the Syndicate once I left Ryn III! Whatever you think you’ve found, it’s all a lie! It’s a
plant
and ... !” His mouth clamped shut, as if he’d realized he made a mistake.

“A plant?” Burke leveled her brown gaze. “How do you know I’ve
found
anything, Commander?”

“I ... I don’t know. I just said that. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Halak,” said Garrett. She didn’t know where this was going, but she knew, instinctively, there was more here than Halak was at liberty to say. Or defend against. No matter what his guilt—no matter if she believed in him or not—she had to keep him from making things worse. “Halak, stop.”

“Commander,” said Tyvan. “Listen to the captain. You need ...”

“Don’t tell me what I need!” Halak’s face contorted with fury. “You’re not the one she’s accusing. You don’t
know
what I need!”

“Well, I
do
know!” Garrett’s voice was like the snap of a whip. “Settle down, mister! That’s an order!”

“Captain,” Halak began. He stopped, closed his eyes. He gripped the edge of the table so hard, his knuckles turned white. “Captain,
please.
You’re going to sit there and listen to her lies?”

“As opposed to yours? Have you given us any choice, Halak?”

Halak opened his mouth. Shut it. His legs folded, and he dropped back into his seat.

After a moment’s silence, Garrett said, “Burke, you’ve got proof?”

Burke had watched the exchange without comment. “Yes.” Garrett heard Halak’s sharp intake of breath. She kept her attention focused on Burke. “You can produce it?”

“Yes.”

“Any objection if we let Halak tell his side of things?” Burke spread her hands. “Absolutely none.”

“Good.” Garrett turned to Halak. “Let’s hear it, Commander. The ball’s in your court.”

She added a silent emendation: Play it wisely.

“There’s the perimeter beacon dead ahead,” Halak said. He was in the front seat, passenger’s side, and pointed through a spray of sleet pattering against the landskimmer’s windscreen.

“I see it,” said Strong, who was driving. He ratcheted up the landskimmer’s speed another twenty kilometers. The tiny craft shivered as the engine kicked in.

Halak heard the Doppler rise and fall of the beacon, and then their craft’s ping of acknowledgement. The beacon was a blur as they whizzed past. On instinct, he glanced up, scanning the underbellies of a layer of gunmetal gray clouds. No air patrols. Yet.

As if reading his thoughts, Strong said, “Now they come after us. Soon as they figure out the skimmer’s stolen.”

“Well, I think we outran them,” said Thex, his blue antennae wiggling with agitation. Using his forearm to swab
away condensation that had fogged the chilled glass of the rear windscreen, Thex squinted. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Don’t count them out.” Halak’s teeth grated. The squeaky sound of fabric on glass set them on edge. “How much further, Strong?”

“Twenty kilometers, Commander.”

“That’s pretty far.”

“It was the best I could do. I didn’t want the city sensor grid picking up on our re-entry trail.”

“I know, I know.” Halak fidgeted. Watched as the scenery scrolled beneath them. Once away from the coast, the terrain on Ryn III turned arid, the vegetation brown and sparse, dotting craggy hills scored by arroyos.

Halak dug his nails into a week’s worth of beard glazing his jaw and jowls and gave himself a good scratch. His nails rasped over stubble. Good God, but he’d be glad to get back to the
Barker.
First thing he’d do was stand under a steaming hot shower—
real
water—for a half hour (he didn’t care if he used up his allotment for the week) and then a shave. (Starfleet Intelligence thought they had to look the part of mercenaries down on their luck. So, the ratty clothing, the beards—all except Thex, whose cheeks were baby-smooth.)

He was antsy. Halak never
had
liked landskimmers. In the air, he could turn and fight. Air was like space: three-dimensional. Traveling a scant seven meters above the surface, with no room to really maneuver, made him anxious. Halak dug into his beard again, for want of anything better to do. “Just feels too far away. You’ve got a fix on the shuttle?”

“Shuttle telemetry’s coming in loud and clear. Lucky I didn’t crack her up, getting her out of parked lunar orbit and piloting via remote. She landed okay, though.”

“Good,” said Halak, knowing their situation was anything but. Having the unmarked, unregistered shuttle touch down without incident was about the only bright spot. He blew out
a breath. He was sweating like a pig, partly from heat, the rest from nerves. He shrugged out of his khaki-colored jacket. Beneath the jacket, he wore Marassian wool pants and a throck-haired shirt: local civilian dress. They’d arrived in the middle of the local spring. The weather was like San Francisco in winter—brisk, cold, with a strong wind coming in off the water and smacking you in the face like an icy fist, and gushers of sleety rain that got dumped by heavy gray clouds every afternoon. But the landskimmer was small, warm, and close with the overripe odor of men’s sweat. Rivulets of perspiration dribbled from Halak’s armpits and crawled over his ribs. Reaching forward, Halak fiddled with a vent, angling cool air into his face.

Strong said, “Setting the shuttle down at the edge of town was too risky.”

“Yeah,” said Halak, without enthusiasm. He felt moisture evanescing from his neck, and his shoulders jerked with an involuntary shiver. He sopped the back of his neck with his sleeve. “Still too far away.”

“We’ll make it.”

Thex piped up from the back seat. “What I wouldn’t give for an emergency beam-out to the
Barker,
sir.”

Halak grunted an assent. “No cavalry this time around. We’re on our own until we clear Ryn space.”

“Plausible deniability,” said Strong, making it sound like something obscene. He depressed the throttle, trying to get more speed out of the skimmer. The vehicle lurched and shuddered. “Hope Starfleet Intelligence is happy.”

“Ease off before we come apart,” said Halak.

“Aye, sir,” Strong said. He sucked air then let it out in a long exhalation. “Sorry. It’s just, well, damn it, it seems
stupid
to have taken this many risks and come away with so little. Waste of time, putting our necks on the line. Felt really close, you know? Like we’re so close to getting something useful on the Syndicate, then our cover gets blown.”

Halak didn’t respond. Strong was right. Ten days wasted, and nothing to show. Hell, they’d be lucky to get off the planet. The ostensible mission had been as deceptively simple as it had been dangerous. Ryn III was one of the Asfar Qatala’s distribution hubs for red ice. The Orion Syndicate was also involved, but Starfleet was still amassing intel on them. Red ice was a secondary concern. The primary goal was to get information on how the Syndicate was currently set up, how it’s network functioned, who controlled what. Follow the money. So, their mission: Pose as independent mercenaries, vie for a piece of the distribution pie, make contact with an operative in the Orion Syndicate. Get the information, and then get the heck off the planet.

The rationale for a trio was also deceptively simple. Three people were, in theory, harder to keep track of than two. If one of them were suspected of being an SI plant, this would take the focus off the other two. At least, that’s what Starfleet Intelligence explained to Thex and Strong. Regrettably, this might lead to one of them being
eliminated—
SI-speak for
very dead.
But no one had forced Thex and Strong to volunteer. What SI didn’t bother explaining was that it was also easier for one of them to peel off from the other two and do another mission—the
real
mission—on the side, without the other two being involved. That’s the rationale that SI—and specifically Commander Marta Batanides—had offered about why Halak, in particular, should volunteer.

Halak didn’t want the mission. He also couldn’t refuse, not when Batanides did an end-around and asked him, again, in front of Captain Connors—not without arousing suspicion. Not without making someone want to take a much closer look at Samir al-Halak, maybe pick apart his past just a teensy bit more. So Halak was stuck. On the one hand, he couldn’t risk SI nosing around more than Batanides, maybe, already had. On the other, he couldn’t
risk anyone from the Qatala—or the Syndicate—drawing a bead. True, he’d been a much younger man when he’d had any dealings with either organization. A boy, really: The last time he’d been on Farius Prime he’d been clean-shaven and about ten kilos lighter. Still.

Angling the landskimmer into a narrow valley formed by the cleft of two deep arroyos, Strong said, “I still don’t understand how that happened, sir. The only time all three of us have been in the same room was when we were each trying to outbid the other. We took different rooms, never crossed paths. Secured channels on our communicators so we didn’t even have to meet. Doesn’t make sense they could have figured out who we are, you ask me. Hey, Thex,” Strong angled his head up, talking to the roof, “how did you say they made us?”

“All I know is we were set up for a meet today with the Syndicate representatives. So I’m at the bar, waiting.”

Halak half-turned. “And?”

“Two men—a Ryn and a Naiad—were gossiping with a waitress about how they’d heard there were Starfleet people nosing around about the Syndicate. The waitress dismissed it. Said they didn’t know what they were talking about, that
she’d
heard the Syndicate hadn’t made the Starfleet people at all, but the
Qatala
had. Said there were three of them and that a Qatala man, one of the old-timers, recognized one of them.”

Halak felt his stomach bottom out.
Damn, damn.
Someone had recognized him. That was the only explanation. And he’d been so
close
...

“Couldn’t be one of us,” said Strong. His brows mated over the bridge of his nose. “We haven’t had anything to do with the Qatala, just the Syndicate guys. Unless Starfleet Intelligence decided to keep an eye on us, and one of them got made. They do that, you know: spies spying on spies. Anyway, it couldn’t have been us, Thex. You heard wrong.”

“My hearing was perfect,” said Thex. “
Is
perfect.”

No. Halak chewed on the soft inner flesh of his cheek. Thex hadn’t been wrong; he just didn’t know. Neither did Strong. None of this was about red ice. Marta Batanides had been very clear about Halak’s real mission, one that even Connors didn’t know because if something went wrong, only Halak—and not Starfleet—would take the fall.

This was all about the Cardassians.

The facts. The Cardassians had been on a massive expansion kick for the last decade, from their failed attempt to claim Legara IV in 2327 and their annexation of Bajor in ’28 to their current wrangling with the Klingon Empire for Raknal V. They’d been expanding, flexing their muscles by conquering smaller, non-Federation worlds nudging the border. There was every reason to believe that the Cardassians wouldn’t stop there. But, in order to take on the Federation, the Cardassians needed more and better weapons.

Fact: The Breen made weapons. Good weapons, advanced weapons, such as type-3 disrupters. SI operatives had reports of Breen weapons turning up on Ryn III, probably bound for Cardassia. No one knew for sure.

Fact: well, a rumor, really. The buzz was that the Breen had developed cloaking technology superior to the Klingons. Bad enough. But there were also rumors swirling around that the Breen had succeeded in testing out prototypes of a new weapon designed to dissipate focused phased energy. The upshot? More energy discharge per volley, with greater range and less dissipated radiant energy than current Starfleet technology. Translation: more bang for the buck, and without a lot of spare change.

Fact: The Breen hated dealing with other species, period. The Breen were nonaligned. They were secretive, isolated. Duplicitous. Betazoids couldn’t get a read on them, and the Breen shielded their bodies in refrigerated encounter suits that duplicated the ambient conditions of their frozen waste of a homeworld. One might have been tempted to call them cold-blooded but for the belief that the Breen didn’t have a drop of blood, of any color or description, flowing in their nonexistent veins.

Fact: Profit was profit. If the Breen were going to get at Cardassian wealth, they’d need a middleman.

And that’s where the Syndicate came in. The likely scenario was that the Syndicate provided the Breen with runners and pilots who would do the work, for a very hefty fee, of ferrying weapons bound for Cardassia. In turn, the Syndicate would make sure that any dealings with the Breen were one step removed.

And that’s where Halak came in. Pose as a freelancer. Make contact with a dealer who needed a ship to transport Breen materiel into Cardassian space. Figure out to whom the dealer reported—the Syndicate, or the Qatala—and then get a read on the weapons distribution hierarchy.

Yet, somehow,
someone
had made Halak. He’d thought Farius Prime was far enough away from Ryn III, but it seemed he’d been wrong.

So who? He cast his mind over the possibilities. The Ryn weapons dealer he discarded on the spot. Halak had funneled data on the weapons dealer back to Starfleet Intelligence on a secured channel and discovered that the man was a native, had never left the planet.

“Well,” he said finally, “what matters now is that we get off the planet and back to the
Barker
without the Ryn fleet on our tail. Then we regroup and figure out what went wrong.”

In a few minutes, Strong banked the landskimmer right, and angled into a narrow canyon between high sheer cliffs to which low clumps of scrub clung. Halak scanned the jagged, rocky ridges but saw no one. Then Halak spotted the shuttle, a class two—capacity of four passengers; max speed, warp two. Fast enough. Ryn scouts could only make warp one-point-five. Quickly, his eyes ran over the exterior, looking for signs of damage. There were none.

“All right, go.” Signaling for Strong to kill the engine, Halak snapped open his side of the landskimmer and scrambled out. “Go, go, let’s go.”

They piled into the shuttle, Halak dropping into the pilot’s chair, and Strong into the seat next to him. Thex took over monitoring their onboard systems. After a cursory check, Halak punched the shuttle’s engines.

In a few moments, Ryn III had fallen away beneath them. Halak was never so happy to see the backside of a planet before in his life. Then, two minutes later, as they passed Ryn III’s near moon and went to warp, Thex said, “Something here, Commander.”

Hell.
“What? A scout?”

Strong shook his head. “Nothing on external scan. No sign of pursuit.”

“That’s not it,” said Thex. He looked up, his sky-blue features pulled in a frown. “I’m getting a signal.”

“Signal?” asked Halak. Barker’s
too far away. They don’t even know we’re off-world yet.
“Is it a hail?”

“No, sir, that’s just it. It’s,” Thex’s fingers played over his console, “sir, it’s coming from
us
.”

“What?” Halak spun around in his chair. “Say again?”

“
Us
. It’s like
we’re
sending out a signal.” Thex’s eyes, baby blue like his skin, widened. “A homing beacon.”