Fallout 20

Tylha

The flaring actinic light of the pulsar strikes blinding reflections off King Estmere's mirrored sides. Ahead of us, even the monstrous bulk of the Garaka is almost invisible in the omnipresent glare. I narrow my eyes at the data readouts.

"Shields holding," Anthi reports, dispassionately.

"What about the Garaka?" I ask.

"Still stable," Anthi says, "but she must be approaching her limits by now."

The pulsar is a madly spinning sphere of neutronium, the relic of a long-gone supernova; its intense gravity and rapid spin flood nearby space with a hail of synchrotron radiation. From the poles of the dead star, jets of electromagnetic radiation shoot millions of kilometres into space - blasts of energy that would shatter my ship in an instant. Even here, exposed only to the side lobes and scattering from those beams, the shields are visibly labouring.

No captain would bring a ship here without a pressing reason - such as, say, in an effort to hide a ship's warp signature from pursuers.

"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," says F'hon Tlaxx.

"On screen."

If the effort of the search is telling on Shalo, it doesn't show; she looks sleek and glossy as ever. "I regret to report negative results," she says. "In my judgment, Captain Klur has used a decoy - probably an astrometric probe set to mimic his warp signature, and aimed at the pulsar. In any case, the trail we followed ends here. Abruptly."

I nod. It makes sense... of course, if the warp signature really did come from Klur's ship, and it had crashed into the pulsar, then we'd never know, one way or the other. "So, what's our next step?" I ask.

"Firstly, to get clear of the pulsar," Shalo remarks dryly. "Then, we will proceed back to our last definite sighting and cast about for a secondary trail. The contacts at that location were ambivalent - we merely followed the most definite trace, here."

"So now we follow a less definite one. Makes sense." I consult my star charts. "There's an emission nebula about twenty, twenty-five parsecs away - might he have headed there, in another attempt to mask his scent?"

"It is certainly a possibility. I will instruct my searchers to consider that direction. Moving now, outside the radiation zone. Garaka out." Shalo's image disappears from the screen, replaced by the fury of the pulsar.

"Follow the Garaka to the edge of the system," I order, and King Estmere comes about. At the main science console, Zazaru sighs and begins work. Across from her, Klerupiru, the Ferengi cyber-warfare expert, is biting her lower lip and studying her own console displays.

Shalo has all the information, and she isn't sharing. We have a vague impression, gleaned from the data records at Bercera, of the QIb laH'e''s warp signature and reactor profile. Shalo has up-to-the-minute information on our target's warp drive, EM emissions, transponder codes - everything, from the shipyard that built and last outfitted her. Her sensors are no better than ours - probably worse - but she is much better equipped to follow Klur's faint trails through subspace, because she knows what she's looking for.

Zazaru and Klerupiru are both, in their own ways, attempting to fix this. Zazaru's job is to sort through the sensor data, backtrack along every path we've taken, and slowly, painstakingly, build up a picture of exactly what Shalo is tracking. It's a heartbreakingly difficult task, and probably a thankless and unrewarding one, too. Klerupiru, meanwhile, is trying to crack the Garaka's data security and get an inside line on Shalo's data. It, too, is a challenging job. Frankly, I don't expect either of them to succeed. But I have to try.

The glare from the pulsar is diminishing, the stress on the shields dropping as we move away. The Garaka is now plainly visible in all its hideous detail, from the runic engravings on the hull, to the red-glowing plasma clouds spouting from its drive.

"Sometimes I don't thing I'll ever understand the Klingons," I remark.

"Sir?" says Anthi.

"Take a look at that thing." I point at the screen. "Suppose the Iconians, or somebody, genetically engineered a race of monsters from Andorian mythology. If we were under attack from, say, some storm-dancer's sky palace, would we take a look at it and say, 'yes, neat ship, let's build some of our own exactly like it'? No matter how good a design it was? But the Klingons...."

"You assume then, sir, that the Fek'lhri are the product of some genetic engineering?" asks Soledad Kleefisch, the human assault team commander. I look at her in astonishment.

"What else could they be?" I ask.

"They might be exactly what they appear to be. Klingon demons," says Soledad. Her cheeks flush faintly. "I know what you're thinking, sir. But the Vulcan katra, the Bajoran Prophets and pah-wraiths, even the Greek gods of my homeworld... they all turned out to be real enough. Why not the Fek'lhri also?"

Well, I suppose she has a point. "Maybe," I say, "but that makes me even less likely to want to fly their ships."

The door of the bridge hisses open behind me, and I turn. Kluthli is standing in the doorway. "Excuse me, sir," she says. "I have something - well, a possibility."

"Oh?"

"I've been monitoring news reports and intelligence traffic," Kluthli explains. "Something happened recently - a disturbance at the Galpor spaceport on the planet Mageptis. It involved a former connection of the House of Sinoom, and a small KDF force in a DujHod Chariot shuttle. According to her information -" Kluthli can barely bring herself to say her kinswoman's name "- Captain Klur was issued with a DujHod."

"Hmm. You reckon this might be your cousin Tayaira looking for an escape route, or something like that?" Kluthli has tried to explain to me how the House of Sinoom was organised, the network of genetic relationships, political alliances and business interests that made up the whole entity. All I got out of it was a headache and an appreciation for the comparative simplicity of Andorian quad-marriages. "I thought Mageptis was way out towards Iota Pavonis space, though?"

"I think you're thinking of another planet, sir. The one I have in mind is here." Kluthli steps up to the star chart and indicates with one perfectly manicured fingernail. "Within our search area, at least."

A search area which expands with every passing second, considering the speed and the endurance of the QIb laH'e', but never mind. The star she's pointing to is... a possibility. It's in a debateable region of space, technically Federation territory, but close enough to the neutral zone - and far enough from Starfleet patrol routes - to trade freely with non-aligned or even Klingon worlds. It's exactly the sort of place I'd expect the Orions to have business interests.

"This doesn't look good," I say. "If Klur and his crew start to trickle out of Federation space by back-alley routes like this... we might never catch up with them."

"It would make our job exponentially harder, sir," says Anthi.

I sigh. "Signal the Garaka," I say. "We'd better see what Shalo knows about this place... and how best to check it out."