“Lieutenant, kindly sit back and shut up. You’re right, the Cardassians have decided to put a backup plan in place, hiding a fleet in the nebula. But think about it for a second. The Klingons may have a backup plan of their own, and they don’t needa nebula to hide in, they have cloaking technology.”
“So why’d they hide in the nebula before?” Troi asked.
Garrett shrugged. “Power consumption, maybe. Or they wanted to take advantage of their superior sensors in the vicinity of the nebula. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Mr. Troi, is there any way to scan for cloaked ships?”
Troi blew out a breath. “Not easily. Every time we come up with a way to penetrate a cloak, the Klingons or the Romulans come up with a better cloak.”
“Yes or no, Mr. Troi.”
“I’m sorry, Commander,” Troi said after a moment, hating himself for doing it, “but I can’t be that definitive.”
Garrett actually smiled at that. “Good man. I prefer an honest answer. Do an intensive scan of the vicinity, long-and short-range, tell me if anything screams ‘cloak’ at you.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
Troi spent the better part of an hour scanning the area. Garrett and Vaughn left him to it, for the most part, both going aft to get some ration packs. Garrett also did a check of all the shuttle’s systems, making sure that the Hoplitewould survive to make it back to the Carthagein one piece—with, Troi heard her mention, specific emphasis on the environmental systems to make sure that the air they lost in the breach would be replenished.
The only interruption came when Vaughn walked over with a mug of tea. “Thanks,” Troi said as he took the steaming mug from Vaughn’s hands. He took a quick whiff, and identified it as the generic tea included in the packs. Pity, I could go for some raspberry herb tea right now.Still, Troi appreciated the gesture.
“I should be thanking you. You saved my life, Ian. It’s greatly appreciated.”
Troi smiled. “You’d have done the same for me.”
“Possibly, but I didn’t have to. You thought very quickly on your feet, and acted without hesitation. Pretty impressive. I just hope that Haden and Garrett appreciate what they’ve got.”
Troi grinned. “Me, too.” He took a sip of the tea, which was bitter, but still warm and comforting.
Then the sensor alarm sounded—a much milder sound than the hull breach alarm from earlier, indicating that the scan was complete.
Garrett apparently heard it from the aft section, as she came forward seconds later. “Report.”
Looking over the results of the scan, Troi shook his head. The final results told the same story that the preliminary findings had been telling him for the past hour. “Best I can give you is a definite maybe, Commander. We’re picking up subspace variances that couldindicate a fleet of cloaked ships. But it could also be simple background radiation.”
“I’m willing to bet it’s the former,” Vaughn said. He looked at Garrett. “Neither the Empire nor the Cardassians have shown themselves to be adept at negotiation where force or guile will do the job nicely.”
“I tend to agree.” Garrett bit her lip. “All right, enough sightseeing. Mr. Troi, set a course for the Carthage.Tell them that we had to cut short our exploration of the nebula, and point to the hole in our rear if they ask why. We’ll give the captain and ambassador a full report on board.”
Troi nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Damn, but I wish I wasn’t right. This can’t possibly bode well.
Chapter 11
U.S.S. Carthage
In the quarters on the Carthageassigned to Talen Kallar, an alarm went off. The alarm emanated from a small device implanted in the ear of the cabin’s occupant, so only he heard it. He barely hesitated in his assigned task of organizing files from the notes that had been taken during the most recent negotiating session. Kallar had a reputation as a physical bumbler, and was more likely to trip over his own feet than walk a straight line, but he was good at the dreary paperwork tasks that always fell upon interns. As a youth, and the lowest-ranking person in Legate Zarin’s delegation, Talen Kallar was assigned those duties.
However, the alarm was not intended for “Talen Kallar,” for the alarm heralded a signal from a device crafted by the organization that had created Talen Kallar. The name and background credited to Kallar in fact had been a fiction written by the Obsidian Order as a cover for one of their newest agents, a recent graduate of Bamarren named Corbin Entek.
While “Kallar” finished coding the latest file for Olett to look over, Entek made mental note of the fact that the alarm indicated that people had entered Captain Vance Haden’s ready room.
According to the ship’s chronometer, the next communications sweep would be in one minute. After that, Entek had a ten-minute window to activate the transmitter in the same device that had sent the alarm. The Carthage’s communications system did an automatic sweep for unauthorized transmissions every ten minutes.
To Entek, that was one of many reasons why he knew that Cardassia would eventually dominate the galaxy. If the Federation—arguably the greatest power in the quadrant—had such lax security on one of their military vessels, they would be ripe for the taking. There was no reason why those scans couldn’t be perpetual, leaving no window for such espionage as Entek was performing. Entek’s original theory, when he was told of this odd security measure, was that it was to conserve power. However, the very room in which he sat proved that to be a false assumption—the Carthagewas a momument to wasted energy, from the overly large rooms to the availability of separate quarters for each member of two full negotiating teams.
The other proof of lax security was the very manner in which Entek had planted the device. The captain had ordered the first officer to give Legate Zarin and his staff a tour of the Carthage—as if they were vacationers visiting a museum! Entek had actually laughed in the human commander’s face when she said she was taking him on that tour, and only a quick conversion of that laugh to a hysterical giggle had enabled him to maintain his cover as a callow youth.
Of course, Entek’s supervisor, whose name Entek did not know, would have said that he wasa callow youth, and he had only gotten this assignment because Zarin would be on the lookout for an Order agent in his midst, so they needed to put in someone the legate would never suspect under any circumstances. Since Zarin generally believed that nobody under the age of forty had any sense or business doing anything responsible, the ideal infiltration candidate was the most youthful member of his delegation.
That cover also provided his means of planting the listening device, which was the size of Entek’s thumbnail, under which he had stored it. When the tour took them to the captain’s ready room, “Kallar” tripped over the carpet, taking advantage of his clumsy maneuver to place the device in a corner. Its surface was sensor-blind—the only way it could be detected was when it transmitted an audiovisual record of the room to the receiver in Entek’s ear.
The chronometer indicated that the time for the communications scan was complete, so Entek removed the device from his ear and plugged it into his handheld computer.
His computer screen lit up with the image of a tharul’s-eye view of the ready room, the feet of the room’s occupants large, their heads comparatively small. Entek could barely see the perspectively tiny head of Vance Haden from his position sitting at his desk. Also present were Commander Rachel Garrett, the first officer who had provided the “tour,” Lieutenant Ian Troi, the ship’s science officer, Lieutenant Elias Vaughn, a consultant from Starfleet Command, and Ambassador Curzon Dax.