Angelica stared at him, then back at the console. The engineering lab was a large, sparsely furnished space inside the domed base - Angelica thought it was on some icy moon of an outer planet in the Sol system, but she was not entirely sure. The console controlled an engineering simulation computer; at the moment, it was displaying a holo-image of a Recluse-class carrier.
"Admiral Shohl is a respected senior officer," she said doubtfully.
"And thus," said Tharval, "quite likely to become the enemy. A representative of Starfleet's old guard, a member of the establishment that we are here to change. Do you think they will not resist that? With force of arms, when they become desperate?"
"I... suppose so," said Angelica.
"Make no mistake, Angelica," said Tharval. "You have made your choice. You have chosen to be on the side of the future... and that means you will need to fight the past." His red eyes glittered, and his mouth moved in what she was learning to recognize as a smile. "I know it is difficult. You must overcome ingrained habits of thought - it is so easy, isn't it, to fall back into the trap of thinking of Starfleet as the good guys? But they are not, not for us. You should think about that reality, Angelica, and about the other realities you will have to embrace."
Angelica said nothing.
Tharval pointed to the holo-image. "The USS King Estmere," he said. "Taken from the Tholians, now in the forefront of Starfleet. In this ship, Admiral Shohl led the hunt for the war criminal Klur; in this ship, she withstood the anger of Sebreac Tharr at the Stygmalian Rift. It is her signature vessel, her chosen flagship." He leaned closer to Angelica. "It has been extensively modified, not least with Jolciot polystable alloys in the structural material. These specialist alloys compensate for the heating problems often found on retrofitted Tholian ships. I do not know the details, Angelica, but you studied on the Jolciot homeworld of Magamba, you are well acquainted with this metallurgy. Find me a weakness in it. So that, if we face the King Estmere in battle, we will win."
"I could...." Angelica bit her lip. "In theory, you can calculate a resonance frequency that would make the primary structural composites delaminate... if you could put that into the SI field, somehow, it'd set up a negative feedback loop. The SI force fields would actually push the separated layers further apart... it'd create massive stress, probably explosive structural failure."
"Good," said Tharval. "This is exactly what I wanted to hear."
"But it would never work," Angelica protested. "You'd need precise details of the ship's configuration, right down to micrometer level, to calculate the frequencies. OK, the King Estmere's been extensively documented, maybe someone could dig all those figures out of the engineering papers - but even then, you'd need to back-door into the SI system somehow. You wouldn't be able to do that, not even with command-level access from the main engineering console on the ship itself - there are too many safeties. You'd need full control over the ship's computers, and for that you'd need a full set of prefix codes. You won't find those in the engineering journals."
"Probably not," said Tharval. "But we have our sources. Other sources."
He turned to go. Angelica said, "Who's we, anyway?"
Tharval turned back. "Pardon?"
"Who's we? I don't think I've seen a living soul here apart from you. You said you were part of an organization -"
"So I am. As are you." Tharval's expression was... unreadable. "This staging facility is being abandoned - it's too close to Earth, and it's not mobile. Since you were coming to us from Earth, I thought we would use it, one last time, for your induction. Action Black, obviously, is distributed over a vast area... you will meet more members than myself, though."
"When?"
"I cannot give you a precise time scale. Our... leader... is away at present, obtaining something suitable for use as a mobile headquarters. Have patience, Angelica. When he returns, you will meet him face to face." The enigmatic Lethean smile reappeared on his face. "He takes a strong interest in all our volunteers."
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