I stalk into the ready room, sit down, and activate the comms console. Pexlini's face appears on the screen in a matter of seconds. "Any results?" she asks.
"I am excessively well informed as to what happens when the Thexemians say their names," I snarl. "As for information of value, they have none. Ostrogolus appears to have been their only contact with their overall employers."
"Makes sense, considering he was the only one to get an emergency brain-ectomy from Headshot Harry," says Pexlini. "And, let me guess, the Orions didn't know anything either?"
"Muscle. An enforcement team, hired through an anonymous cut-out. A dead end."
"Disposable muscle," says Pexlini. "Like the battleship that attacked those Ferengi, too. Now listen. I've been thinking -"
"I thought I saw signs of unaccustomed effort," I mutter.
"Love you too, sweetheart," says Pexlini. "Also, I have had an offer. Message came in along the same encrypted subspace channel we used to set up the meet at Eta Meridia. Congratulated me on 'passing the first test', so it said, and telling me the prize is another meeting with one of Thrang's agents, this time on Nimbus III."
"I see," I say.
"Right. So that's what I've been thinking about."
"It does not seem to require much thought. We need to make contact with Kalevar Thrang, and this is the only route available to us."
"Well, now," says Pexlini, "that's why I'm thinking. Why should Thrang be setting tests for potential customers, huh? The only test he should worry about is how much we're prepared to pay him, right? If he wants to weed out people who aren't serious about getting the Archive, all he has to do is ask for sealed bids and then throw out all the low-ball offers, yeah?"
I look more closely at her. "That... would seem to make sense."
"'nother thing. Where did the Orions come from? Somebody leaked enough information so that Orion hit squads could intercept us and the Ferengi. The Ferengi ain't nearly as dumb as they look, and I'm guessing you didn't spill the details of our mission in some seedy Reman bar somewhere, and I know damn well I didn't. So, where did they get their information from? The only other person we know has details on the meets is - Kalevar Thrang."
"Thrang is sabotaging his own efforts to sell the Archive? That makes no sense."
"Misdirection, maybe. He gets a bunch of us chasing around, from Eta Meridia to Nimbus to God knows where next, and in the meantime he sneaks the Archive out to some buyer he's already got lined up. That's one possibility, anyway. Makes more sense than figuring he's setting up some quest for the Holy Archive that only the pure in heart may attain, though, doesn't it?"
"I... see," I say slowly. "So. How do you intend to proceed?"
"Well, we kinda need to get ahead of them, don't we? I reckon there's no reason to think this meeting on Nimbus will work any better than the last one. So, among other things, there is gonna be an Orion force heading out to intercept me. So, if we can figure out where that force is starting from -"
"The Syndicate's operations on Nimbus III itself were curtailed, severely, after Hassan the Undying's... misadventures."
"Yeah. So, my guess is they will bring in teams via some staging post reasonably near Nimbus. So, if we start putting out feelers there -"
"I can consult with Imperial Intelligence, and give you the names of suspected Syndicate bases in the vicinity," I say.
Pexlini pulls a face. "Problem is, well, there's two problems, kinda thing. Firstly, Thrang will smell a rat if I don't high-tail it off to Nimbus to take his bait. Secondly, here in this quadrant I'm sorta conspicuous, dammit. Hazari destroyer shows up in Syndicate space, they're gonna have a shrewd idea who it is, and maybe even why it's there. So this one - well." Her pale blue eyes are quite intense as she looks at me. "Aelahl warbirds ain't ten a penny, I grant you, but they're a lot more common than my ship. And besides, you Remans are all about the inconspicuous, right?"
---
We have little to go on. We can, however, identify the captured Orions - their house affiliations and known previous contracts - and we have transponder and warp signature ID from the destroyed Slavemaster battleship. It is not much, but I am in a position to query both Republic and Imperial Intelligence, and from those queries, the glimmer of a clue emerges.
So, now, my ship is drifting through the outer reaches of the Tysirrian Beta system, cloaked, invisible against a backdrop of frozen moons and ice giants lit by a wan, distant red sun.
Tysirrian Beta is one more backwater left behind in the slow, agonizing collapse of the Romulan Star Empire. It has no class M worlds, only a pair of hot rocky planets near the sun, and three ice giants rolling around near the Oort cloud. Once, it was a Romulan base; then, the Star Empire withdrew, and the opportunists moved in. The orbital facilities and the ground bases on the moons are all held by factions of the Orion Syndicate. It is from these factions - Imperial Intelligence believes - that our attackers were hired. And Tysirrian Beta is the closest known Syndicate base to Nimbus III.
I stir restlessly in the command chair while N'aina and E'Maon meticulously read off the checklist for the stealth intelligence packages' deployment. Once the tiny satellites are ready, and seeded through the system, they should give us a complete picture of ship movements and comms traffic. It helps, of course, that the Orions are using much salvaged Romulan technology -
"Cloak status?" I ask Kaxath.
"Stable. Not that there are many sensors out anyway," he replies.
"Their security seems lax," I mutter to myself. Strange. The Syndicate is usually efficient enough... but it is in a strange state of uncertainty, and has been since the armistice with the Federation. With no need for raids on Federation territory - indeed, with such raids strongly discouraged - the Syndicate, along with several of the more piratical Klingon Great Houses, has suffered severe restrictions to its normal source of income. Its leaders are casting about for replacements - and, in the meantime, a lot of the rank and file soldiers are at loose ends. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising they become... sloppy.
I call up the tactical plot on my console and study it. This ice giant is Tysirrian Beta V, a dull bluish globe some thirty thousand kilometres in diameter, its atmosphere churning with sluggish storms of methane and hydrogen. It has four large moons and at least forty more chunks of orbiting asteroidal trash. The two largest moons have old Star Empire bases, and over the years a scattering of listening posts, defence satellites and orbital drydocks has grown up around them. There is not enough there for a full-scale planetary defence grid... but there should be more security than we are seeing. Two of the drydocks have powered-down ships in them - if this were a raid, I could move in and blast them with one volley, now, and escape before any retaliation could even be organized. The Orions are lucky this is not a raid....
I frown. Something is bothering me. I look more closely at the plot.
We are moving towards a cluster, a temporary conjuction, of several asteroid moonlets. Some of them are... wrong. Their albedo is higher than I would expect, their temperature, too. These frozen little worldlets should barely have a temperature worth measuring. I select one, pull up the survey records for it. It is brighter than the old Star Empire surveys show - and hotter - and it has gained mass....
My eyes widen. I switch displays, looking at the sensor readings, the patterns of radiation from star, planet, random fluctuations in subspace... looking for something... and my spine chills when I find it.
Tachyons.
"Red alert," I order. All heads turn towards me. "Abort the mission. Decloak and raise shields, steer two hundred mark zero, maximum evasive!" I glare. "They have a tachyon detection grid! And we are in it!"
I will give my crew due credit; they do not hesitate. Alarm sirens blare, and the light on the bridge changes, indefinably, as the cloaking field drops. But we were in the jaws of the trap already -
The extra mass on those asteroids is coming alive.
Orion warships, lying doggo, waiting to take us. Now, they move - but too soon, just too soon - out of position, some of them out of range entirely.
Some too close. Palatine's plasma beams lash out at a Slavemaster whose shields are only now coming online, punch through the shields and rip lines of fire and broken metal across the hull. That one is hurt, badly hurt. But there are too many others.
Disruptor light burns green across space, into our shields. We are caught in a vicious crossfire, and there are more ships moving - interceptors, closing fast. We need to be away from here, and soon. My mind is racing -
"Incoming torps! Brace for impact!"
Palatine shudders. Warning lights bloom on the status board, and there is the bang and brilliant flare of a transient console overload. "All arrays, independent fire! Take out those interceptors!"
Space is alive with stabbing lines of light. Palatine twists and weaves, her weapons spitting back hot defiance. "Shields at fifty-eight per cent!" N'aina shouts. There is another searing flash from an overload on the bridge.
"Singularity status?" The overcharge power from the singularity core is my one hope, now. With each exchange of fire, the power levels in the capacitor banks builds further.
"Level two. Approaching three," says Kaxath. "Sir, we can divert to shields -"
"No. Use the auxiliary battery. Evasion pattern Os-4, now!" I have a plan for the singularity charge. However, it depends on us surviving long enough to use it -
The shields strengthen, then flare and waver again as fresh barrages sweep over us. "Hull breach, deck six!" someone shouts. There are at least two Corsair-class flight deck cruisers out there, hurling interceptors at us. Our plasma beams reach out and burn the little fighters - but there will be more, and yet more.
"Target the nearest Corsair. Fire torpedo." We have only one forward torpedo tube - it will have to be enough. The particle emission torpedo streaks across space, explodes against the cruiser's hull, surrounds it with a flickering cloud of destructive charged particles. More disruptors flash back at us in retaliation. We have burned down several interceptors, we have hurt a battleship and a cruiser - we have not done enough, not nearly enough, to win this fight. We cannot win, so we must flee.
The bridge rocks. The whole ship rocks. Damage lights are flaring all over the status board. Too bright. "Shields down!" N'aina yells. "Hull breaches decks eight through twelve!" There is a faint, terrible scream of escaping air.
The singularity charge reaches level five. Maximum. It must be now.
"Cloak, and project decoy! Then - singularity jump!"
Palatine shimmers and fades from view - useless, in the tachyon field, except for one thing. The Aelahl warbird's cloak is integrated with an auxiliary holo-emitter, projecting a short-lived photonic decoy, a copy of the ship, as we cloak. For a brief instant, our attackers will target that decoy instead of us.
And, in that brief instant, I discharge the singularity core's capacitors into the warp drive. A brief power surge, brief enough to flip us across subspace -
Outside the range of the tachyon grid.
I feel the jump, a violent jolt that seems as though it will jar my teeth loose from their sockets. But we are out of the Orions' field of fire. The photonic decoy proves very short-lived indeed, vanishing to nothing in a blaze of disruptors. But space is clear of intrusive tachyons, and it will take the Orion ships precious seconds to find us again - seconds I do not propose to allow them.
"Evasion pattern Rad-3. Warp drive status?"
N'aina peers through smoky air at the engineering console. "Warp drive online. Just about."
"Then get us clear of the planet, and away!"
The Orion ships are already moving, questing along our last known line of flight. I wince as I look at the status board, translating each warning light to a scar on my ship's hull, to members of my crew hurt or dying in tangles of wreckage. The scream of escaping air has stopped. Either the hull breach was sealed... or that section of the ship has depressurized completely.
"We're outside the planet's gravity well," says N'aina. "Safe to transition to warp speed."
"Do it."
There is a lurch and a rumble as Palatine's wounded engines hurl her across the light barrier. I slump in the command chair. "Set up," I mutter. "Another line of defence, and we walked straight into it. Whoever is backing Kalevar Thrang, they think ahead, and they do not want to be found."
"Where to, now, sir?" asks E'Maon.
"We have few options. Nimbus III. We must make repairs, and the orbital dock there is nearest." I shake my head. "And we must support the Talaxian. Or, at least, try to recover her body."
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