Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice (43 page)

“In one breath you say Throk is a liar,” Riker shot back. “In the next you take credit for what happened to him. Which is it?”

Ishan waved away his challenge as if it were nothing. “The True Way is made up of terrorists, that is not in doubt. I'll sleep soundly knowing there are fewer of them to threaten the citizens of the galaxy.” He eyed Riker coldly. “If death is the justice they received, I will live with that.”

“And the law be damned?”

“It was the Cardassians like Throk who taught me law and justice can sometimes be very different things,” said the Bajoran. “I haven't forgotten the lesson.”

“You approved Velk's actions.” Riker threw out the accusation and dared Ishan to deny it.

“Do I approve
of them
?” Ishan replied, refusing to take the bait. “I approve of those who understand that the United Federation of Planets needs strength now, not divisiveness. That is why this business with the Andorians has been so disappointing.” He looked away, shaking his head. “I hope the Prophets smile on Galif. He realized too late that he had crossed a line in his zeal to protect the ideals of the Federation. That's why he came to me and told me everything. He knows he has done wrong. He will accept his punishment and seek forgiveness.”

“He jumped before he could be pushed?” Riker's tone was acid.

Ishan ignored his words. “It falls to me to salvage this now. I was willing to rise to the call when President Bacco was taken from us, and today I have had to do that again, to stare a painful truth in the eye and not flinch from it. I do this, Riker, because I must. And if the people of the United Federation of Planets wish it, it will be my honor to go on doing that.”

Riker took a step closer and placed his hands on the worn, dark surface of the desk, the centuries-old wood cool beneath his fingers. “I don't believe for one second that you were ignorant of what Galif jav Velk was doing.” His voice was low and loaded with menace.

“Your opinion is your right,” Ishan replied, matching
his tone. “No matter how mistaken it may be. But I am your commander in chief, and you will follow my lead. Is that clear, Admiral?”

Slowly, Riker pulled back and returned to parade-ground attention, eyes staring straight ahead and out the window. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “But I would be negligent in my duties if I did not make something very clear to you. It's the reason I came here tonight.”

Ishan stood up, reaching for the folded jacket. “Really?” He was offhand, concentrating on dressing for his next public appearance. “And here I thought you had barged into the highest office in this government in order to beat your chest.” The Bajoran gave him a cursory glance. “If you have more to say, let's have it. Speak freely, while you still have the rank to back it up.”

“You talk about advocating strength, but all you project is antagonism. The Federation has never started a war in all the time it has been in existence. A belligerent stance against the Typhon Pact won't defuse tensions, it will only escalate them . . . and then we'll find ourselves back in the bad old days of the twenty-third century. At best, another cold war like the conflicts we fought with the Klingons and the Romulans, full of proxy skirmishes and secret warfare. At worst . . .” He hesitated, sensing that dark shadow looming again. “A battle on a dozen fronts and a Federation that will crack under the strain.”

Ishan adjusted his jacket. “You paint a vivid picture, Admiral. Now let me do the same.” He took a breath. “We are wounded, Riker, and our enemies smell the blood in the water. Even our allies look at us and wonder how we will stumble on, watching and waiting for the next aggressor to attack. I will change
that. Together,
we will change that
.” He walked past the admiral, and the doors opened as he approached. “You would do well to consider which side you wish to be on when that begins.”

“I took an oath,” Riker said. “To defend the Federation. And that won't be set aside to fuel one man's political ambitions.”

But Ishan had already dismissed him from his thoughts, and he left Riker standing alone in the presidential office, the room silent around him.

*  *  *

Along the
Titan
's longest axis, through the center of the primary hull, there was a single continuous corridor that almost ran the full length of the starship from bow to stern. Wider than normal, big enough that a ground rover could have traveled it with room to spare, the ship's crew called it “Broadway” after a colloquial term from Earth's oceangoing navies, itself a reference to a location in the Terran city of New York.

It reminded Nog a little of the Promenade on the old DS9 but lacking the scrappy and unpredictable nature of the things aboard the aged Cardassian space station. Remembering it gave him a curious flutter of homesickness, and as he walked, Nog wanted to be back there, among the safe and familiar. But that place was gone now, destroyed by a terrorist attack in the midst of a battle with ships of the Typhon Pact.

He pushed away a gloomy mood that threatened to cloud his thoughts. His debriefing regarding the aftermath of the Active Four mission was at an end, and he had been declared free to return to his previous duties. It was, he had to admit, somewhat unexpected; Nog had imagined that he would be kept on Earth for days, perhaps weeks, to come, forced to reiterate
the circumstances of his recruitment by Lieutenant Colonel Kincade and his experiences while part of the covert task force. Instead, a dour Betazoid from Starfleet Intelligence and an equally taciturn human from the Federation Security Agency had grilled him for a few hours then cut him loose.

He wasn't about to question his good fortune. All Nog wanted right now was to be away from here, away from all the things that were troubling him. . . .

He halted and sighed.
But going back to the new DS9 won't make that happen. It's not like I can just turn my back on what took place at Iota Nadir and Nydak. I'm involved. I'm
part
of this now. Like it or not.

“Lieutenant Commander Nog?” He turned as he heard a woman's voice call his name. “I'm Commander Vale,
Titan
's first officer. Do you have a moment?”

“Yes, sir,” Nog replied. He hadn't met Vale before, but something about her reminded him of someone he knew. She studied him, a searching, strong gaze that peered out from under a cut of dark hair with a single striking white highlight.
Odo,
he thought.
She has that same look Odo used to give me when I was a youth.

“Walk with me.” He fell in step with Vale, stealing a glance at her. “So you're heading down to the forward locks to disembark, is that right?”

He nodded. “That's right. There's a runabout waiting on McKinley that'll take me to Bajor.”

“Eager to get back?”

Nog gave a halfhearted chuckle. “Does it show?”

“A little.” Vale smiled back. “But I'm afraid you're going to be late.” She turned off the wider corridor and into one of the smaller radial passages. The commander's body language made it very clear she expected Nog to follow her.

He trailed after her, his brow furrowing. “Uh, sir. The airlocks are
that
way.” Nog jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Your ride will have to wait,” she told him, halting outside a hexagonal double-door hatchway. Vale tapped out a string of numbers into a pad near the hatch and it hissed open. Nog glimpsed the grid-plan deck and walls of a holodeck inside. “After you,” said the commander, indicating the entrance.

Nog stepped through warily and found Tuvok waiting within. The Vulcan gave him a curt nod and returned to his observation of two individuals working at a large holographic template construct in the center of the chamber. One of them resembled a tawny-furred grazing mammal but augmented with cybernetic implants and prosthetics, while the other was a humanoid-arachnid form clearly of artificial origins. The spider-like mechanism had an odd, glassy texture to it, and as Nog studied it, he realized it was not actually a physical construct. “That's . . . a holoprogram of some kind?”

“A limited definition, sir,” said the deer-like being in a piping voice, and now Nog saw the alien wore an ensign's insignia at his throat. “White-Blue is a purely synthetic artificial intelligence matrix acting through a holographic drone-form.”

The name rang a bell. “The . . . Sentry? I read a monograph about them in the
Starfleet Journal of Engineering
. . . .”

“Yes!” The ensign bobbed on his clawed feet. “I wrote it! Ensign Torvig Bu-Kar-Nguv, sir.”

“Lieutenant Commander Nog,” he said by way of reply, before glancing at Tuvok. “This is an interesting ship you have here.”

“Technically, my designation is SecondGen White-Blue Iteration Two-Point-Zero,” noted the AI. “You are: species identifier: Ferengi.”

“That's right . . . but I thought you had been downloaded or something. . . .”

“Affirmative. I have since rebooted and undertaken a system upgrade.”

“Okay.” He didn't question the reply; it wasn't the most unusual thing he had encountered during his time in Starfleet, not by a long way. Nog walked closer, studying the complex holotemplate floating before them. “This looks like a subspace domain pattern . . . an encrypted field model?”

“What would
your
estimation be, Mister Nog?” asked Tuvok.

He shrugged, but in truth Nog's mind was already caught up by the mystery of the subspace waveforms—not to mention the strange AI. He heard the doors open and close behind him as he went on. “At a guess? A micro-dimensional pocket domain acting as a subspace radio conduit. But deep into the low ranges, hard to find unless you know the exact quantum frequency.”

“Tuvok was right, sir,” Vale was saying. “He
is
good.”

Nog turned to see who the commander was addressing, and he immediately snapped to attention at the sight of a human in an admiral's uniform. At the admiral's side stood another female commander, this one a striking dark-haired Betazoid. Nog was momentarily wrong-footed when he recognized the senior officer. “Tom . . . ?”

“Huh,” said the admiral, almost to himself. “Now I know how
he
feels.” He shook his head. “No, Mister
Nog, I'm William Riker. You've already met the rest of my people; this is
Titan
's diplomatic officer, Commander Deanna Troi.”

“The daughter of the notorious Lwaxana Troi?” He bowed slightly. “An honor to meet you, Commander.”

“
Notorious
?” asked Vale, raising an eyebrow. “Don't you mean
famous
?”

“No,” said Deanna wryly, “he doesn't.”

Nog felt all eyes on him, and it wasn't comfortable. “Sir . . . why have I been brought here?”

“Let's get to that,” said the admiral.

*  *  *

Riker turned to Tuvok and threw him a nod. The Vulcan went to the holodeck's control panel and entered another code string.

“Secured,” reported Tuvok. “This compartment is fully isolated from all of
Titan
's internal systems.”

He looked around the compartment, taking them all in, meeting their gazes one by one. “I'll come right to the point. In the past few weeks we have all been forced to cross lines. To make choices that were unpalatable to us, because of circumstances beyond our control. But that ends now.” Riker walked into the middle of the chamber, studying the subspace domain Torvig and White-Blue had uncovered. “I am taking back control. Not just for myself, but for my crew, my fleet, and
my
Federation. I need you to help me do it.” The room was silent now, and Riker's throat became dry. “In the past, I've sailed close to the wind more times than I should have. Bucked regulations, even downright disobeyed direct orders on occasion. And I've asked a lot of you, taking you with me into harm's way time after time. It is my privilege that you didn't question, that you gave me your trust. I want to
thank you all for that . . . and then ask you once more, to do so again.” He thought about the others who were not in this room, people like Ssura, Ranul Keru, Melora Pazlar, Y'lira Modan, and other members of the
Titan
's crew; all of them had already given implicit declarations of their loyalty. Riker found Deanna's warm, steady gaze upon him, and he drew strength from it. “Everyone here senses the shadow that has fallen over the United Federation of Planets since Nan Bacco was assassinated. The laws we stand by are being eroded. The principles we swore to uphold, dismissed. Power . . . abused.” He shook his head. “Enough is enough. Our duty is clear-cut and undeniable. We either stand foursquare behind the ideals this uniform represents, or we stand aside and watch others push us to the brink of open war. Our resolve has been tested to the limit by the challenges we have faced, and now a new threat is rising.” Riker glanced at Nog. “You've seen it. We all have.”

“Aye, sir. . . .” said the Ferengi quietly.

“Here's what I need. I want every one of you to dig deep, to call in
your
favors, to use every ounce of skill and courage you have. I want you to help me get to the heart of what is going on in the shadows before we reach the point of no return.” He paused, weighing his next words. “There is a rot at the core of the Federation . . . and we are going to put an end to it.”

“You demand much, William-Riker,” said White-Blue.

“No one knows that more than I do,” he admitted. “I won't question anyone who wants to step away. This road I'm on . . . it could take everything from those who follow me.”

“I'm in,” Vale said simply.

“Agreed,” offered Tuvok.