Section 31 - Disavowed Read online

  Except when it interrupted her train of thought.

  “Director Saavik? Excuse me! Director Saavik!”

  The urgency of Sherlas Rokaath’s plea for attention stopped Saavik in the middle of the station’s central concourse. She watched the young Zakdorn wend his way through the floodcrush of pedestrian traffic. His struggle to catch up to her reminded Saavik of a fish fighting a river’s current to return to its ancestral spawning waters. By the time he reached her side, he was more than a bit winded. He bent forward and grabbed his knees. A moment later he held up one hand, a pleading gesture for patience. “Sorry. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “You should have paged me.”

  “We tried, Director. Several times.”

  Saavik concealed her fleeting mild embarrassment. Age was starting to take its toll on her, in ways both crude and subtle. One of her body’s more insidious betrayals had been the slow degradation of her hearing. “My apologies, Rokaath. I will have my aural implant adjusted. Now—what do you need to tell me?”

  He held out a padd. “The QR sensors detected a dimensional breach.”

  She took the padd from him. “An incursion from the other universe?” She skimmed the report, expecting the worst. Most of the previous crossovers from the other universe had occurred in the Bajor system—the one locale in which neither Memory Omega nor the Galactic Commonwealth could afford a disruption at this critical juncture. When she saw the coordinates of the breach, she was surprised. “It occurred inside Breen space?”

  “Just barely.” Rokaath reached over and touched an icon on the padd’s screen to call up a map of the sector around the anomaly. “It happened within less than a light-year of the Commonwealth’s neutral zone.”

  “Most unusual.” Saavik turned and walked at a brisker pace than she had before.

  Rokaath hurried after her. “What do you think it means?”

  “I have insufficient data to draw a conclusion.” She turned a corner and quick-stepped toward a nearby bank of turbolifts that would take her to the station’s subspace transporter facility. “Come with me. We need to return to Omega Prime.”

  She led him into an open lift pod. As soon as the doors closed, she spoke her destination for the computer to hear: “Subspace transport.” The lift pod sped away without any discernible sensation of movement; only the flashing of lit panels on the bulkheads and a steady hum of electromagnetic drivers signaled their rapid passage to the station’s core.

  The pod’s doors opened on a long passageway. Saavik and Rokaath exited the lift. Despite his youth and longer legs, he had to exert himself to keep pace with her, and he sounded out of breath as he spoke. “Do you think the Breen know about the incursion?”

  Saavik tapped the padd and called up a tactical report. “Unlikely. We’ve detected no changes in their fleet deployments since the breach.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Not necessarily. It might suggest the Breen caused the event.”

  The Zakdorn’s ridged, gray face scrunched with doubt. “I don’t see how they could have. They have no ships or stations anywhere near those coordinates.”

  “Then that is good news.” She turned right, and a tall pair of doors parted ahead of her. Rokaath followed her inside a cavernous, silo-shaped compartment. Three curved banks of glossy companels ringed an elevated platform, which was accessible by short stairs between the control stations. White-jacketed technicians hailing from several species manned the various posts. One of them, a dignified-looking graybeard of a Tellarite, cracked a broad smile at Saavik. “Good morning, Director.”

  “Hello, Doctor Treg. Please set coordinates for Omega Prime.”

  “Yes, Director.” He nodded at his colleagues, who translated the order into action.

  Saavik and Rokaath ascended the nearest flight of steps to the platform. They stood at arm’s length from each other in the center of the dais.

  Treg checked the master console, which stood apart from the others. “Coordinates locked, coils charged.” He looked up at Saavik. “Ready on your mark.”

  “Energize.”

  The Tellarite scientist activated the subspace transporter. The oppressive force of the annular confinement beam seized hold of Saavik. It was an unpleasant feature of the system, but a necessary one to prevent mishaps during the dematerialization sequence. Next came a brilliant flash of white light that prompted Saavik’s inner eyelid to blink shut for her own protection, just as those of her ancestors would have done against the glare of Vulcan’s fierce desert sun.

  The blinding flare abated. Saavik and Rokaath stood in a chamber identical to the one they had left on Erebus Station, but this one was located in the secret headquarters of Memory Omega, which was sequestered deep inside an enormous asteroid in the Zeta Serpentis system.

  Looking back at her from this room’s master control panel was its Andorian supervisor. The tall, gaunt-faced thaan greeted Saavik with a small nod. “Welcome back, Director.”

  “Thank you, Arrithar. Inform the observation lab that I’ll be down to see them directly.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She led Rokaath off the platform and out of the room. They crossed the corridor and stepped into the lift. Saavik ordered the computer, “Observation lab.” The lift hummed into motion, hurtling swiftly deeper into the core of Zeta Serpentis.

  Rokaath grew anxious. “We need to secure the breach site as soon as we can.”

  “We need all the jaunt ships standing by in case something goes wrong at Bajor.”

  “All of them? We can’t spare even one? What if someone’s crossing over?”

  His presumption vexed her to no end. “So far there’s no evidence of any crossing. You yourself told me we’ve detected no ships in that vicinity. No, this doesn’t merit a jaunt ship. Not yet, anyway. We’ll investigate through subtler means.”

  “And if further action is required?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” The lift stopped, the doors opened. She led him to a checkpoint area secured by a variety of biometric scanners. “Saavik, authorization one nine alpha sierra seven kilo blue.”

  As she crossed the room, devices she couldn’t even see confirmed her genetic profile; others verified her retinal pattern and voiceprint. One checked the distribution of her body mass while a related system analyzed her kinetic profile. By the time she reached the reinforced blast door on the far side of the room, it moved aside to grant her ingress to one of Memory Omega’s most closely guarded tactical secrets: the observation lab.

  It was a small octagonal chamber just twelve meters across, and fewer than four meters from floor to ceiling. Its perimeter was packed with the fastest, most powerful computers Memory Omega possessed—all linked to the bizarre machine in the center of the room.

  The bulk of the contraption was a free-floating gyroscope with a harness seat, all encased in two interlocking hemispheres of transparent aluminum. Welded to the harness seat’s frame, in a position optimized for viewing by its occupant, was a curve-cornered, rectangular frame of gray metal with a width-to-height ratio of 2.35:1. The frame was curved forward on both sides into a 120-degree arc.

  Its inner sphere was enveloped by a larger one, also composed of transparent aluminum. Repulsor emitters lined the interior surface of the outer sphere and generated a steady field of uniformly distributed energy that kept the inner sphere suspended in place while also permitting it to pitch, yaw, and rotate freely on all three axes. Precisely ten centimeters of empty space separated the two hollow orbs.

  Outside the spheres, four massive robotic arms—two mounted in the floor, two anchored in the ceiling—stood ready to seize the hemispheres when it came time to part them, whether for routine maintenance or to facilitate the comings and goings of its operators.

  Inside the machine, strapped into the harness seat, was one of Memory Omega’s most skilled operators of the quantum window: a doe-eyed young human woman named Jesi Mullins. Her long dark hair was gathere
d into a utilitarian bun behind her head. Perspiration shimmered on her forehead as she guided the gyroscope back to equilibrium and a gentle stop.

  Monitoring her progress from a control station a few meters away from the machine was the project’s current supervisor, Doctor Tsemiar. The lanky Efrosian wore his long white hair loose and wild, and his snowy mustache drooped and curled upward again with incomparable élan. Only the slightest hint of crow’s-feet beside his pale blue eyes betrayed his imminent slide into middle age. He noted Saavik and Rokaath’s arrival with raised eyebrows. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise.”

  “It shouldn’t be. I told Arrithar to advise you I was coming.”

  “And so he did. I merely sought to soften the rough edges of our day with a bit—”

  “We need to use the machine.” Her interruption sounded more brusque out loud than she had intended, but she knew that Tsemiar could prattle on endlessly unless one curtailed his verbosity. She handed Rokaath the padd and pointed him toward the control panel. “Mister Rokaath will program the new coordinates.”

  Mullins shot a desperate look at Tsemiar. “Doc? I’ve been strapped in for almost six hours. I need a break.”

  Tsemiar’s eyes brimmed with pathos as he looked to Saavik for mercy. “I agree with her, Director. We should bring in a fresh operator.”

  “No. This is a priority assignment. I need your best—and that’s her.”

  The soft-spoken scientist demurred with a slight bow of his head. “As you wish.”

  Mullins breathed an angry sigh that resonated inside the spheres. “Thanks a lot, Doc.”

  Rokaath keyed in the coordinates of the breach, and then he looked at Saavik. “Which frequency? Ours or theirs?”

  “Start with ours. If something made it through, we need to know immediately. If not, we can shift our investigation to their side and see what they’re up to over there.”

  Rokaath tuned the machine. Countless times over the past century, Saavik had seen Memory Omega’s brightest minds use the quantum window to spy on a seemingly infinite variety of parallel universes—not for the sake of contact, or to discover the true extent of the multiverse. They had done it for two reasons only: to identify potential threats to their universe and neutralize them before they manifested, and to discover the greatest technologies of thousands of other realities—and steal them for Memory Omega.

  The image of deep space appeared inside the holographic frame of the quantum window. Mullins rotated the gyroscope and let it free-tumble as she searched the interstellar void for any sign of an interloper from the most troublesome parallel universe of all—their closest quantum neighbor, whose previous incursions had altered the course of this universe’s destiny. The computer superimposed semitransparent, real-time telemetry and sensor data over the image while she worked.

  Rokaath handed off the control panel to Tsemiar and returned to Saavik’s side. He sounded worried. “What if our friends from the other side are up to their old tricks again?”

  “Then we might need to teach them the same lesson we taught the Alliance: that they cross us at their peril.”

  Six

  Every meeting was different. It was for security reasons, they had told Sarina, and once the methods were explained to her, she had understood. A major part of the rationale was to avoid creating anything that might be interpreted as a pattern, by whoever might be observing an agent. The result was that she never knew until the very last moment what to expect of her next meeting with Ilirra Deel, her Starfleet Intelligence liaison.

  Sarina’s instructions came in the form of anonymous personal advertisements placed in various daily periodicals. Sometimes, if it was unclear where she would be when the message was sent, a global or interplanetary publication was used. At times when her location was relatively stable, such as her current residence on Andor, local media were used instead.

  A complex set of ciphers governed the code. Different keywords were used to identify a coded message depending upon the date and the day of the week. Thanks to Sarina’s genetically enhanced eidetic memory, it had been easy for her to memorize the patterns.

  Most often, the message was concealed in whatever section of the personals existed for “missed connections” or “casual encounters.” They were always phrased in the past tense, as if to imply the paths of strangers had crossed and one of them was reaching out in the desperate hope of reconnecting. Sarina often wondered whether anyone who placed or browsed such ads ever found the person they’d sought, or recognized themselves in someone else’s plea for contact. She doubted it. All she needed from the coded ads meant for her was a place and a time, and some hint as to what disguise Deel would be using to conceal their sub rosa meeting.

  When Sarina needed to set the meeting—as was the case on this occasion—she used her own version of the cipher, one in which she posed as a male Bolian with a speech impediment seeking a second chance to make a first impression on some fetching beauty or other. On such occasions, Sarina dictated the specifics of Deel’s disguise. To amuse herself, she had taken to imposing the most absurd details she could think of—much to the Betazoid woman’s dismay.

  Left to her own devices, Deel chose pedestrian cover identities, personas she could easily slip into and out of on a moment’s notice: a prim Vulcan woman with a penchant for midnight blue apparel; an auburn-haired, blue-eyed Trill student whose allergies to most ophthalmic medications and ocular implants forced her to correct her vision with old-fashioned glasses; or, when she was feeling lazy, she would simply wear blue contact lenses to cover her solid-black irises and don a blond wig to pose as a human.

  For today’s meeting, Sarina had been determined to make Deel work a bit harder.

  Sarina was the first to arrive at the meeting site in New Therin Park. It was only a short walk from the Federation Security Agency’s office tower in Lor’Vela, which had been appointed the new capital of Andor after the Borg invasion leveled the previous capital nearly five years earlier. She found a bench in the middle of the park, near one of the natural hot springs that sustained the lush green oasis, and pretended to read from a padd.

  The bench across from hers was empty. Because it was early, just past dawn, there were few people in the park other than herself and a few joggers, plus a small multispecies group practicing tai chi on the south lawn.

  A few minutes later, Deel arrived, disguised as Sarina had directed. Every exposed bit of Deel’s flesh had been painted the dark green of an Orion, and she wore a copper-hued wig that contrasted sharply with the rich emerald color of her eyes. Completing the portrait of a woman out of her element, she was decked out in an uncomfortable-looking latex bodysuit accessorized with thigh-high boots and an extra-short imitation leather jacket.

  Deel made a point of avoiding eye contact with Sarina, who nonetheless felt the Betazoid’s resentment radiating toward her like the heat of a bonfire. Then she heard her liaison’s viperous telepathic voice inside her head.

  <>

  Even though Sarina had no native telepathic ability, she had been trained by Deel to serve as an active receiver for psionic contact. Deel did most of the work; she had been born a gifted telepath, even by Betazoid standards. Now, after years of working together at Starfleet Intelligence, they had grown quite adept at sharing their thoughts.

  Sarina focused her mind to reply, as Deel had taught her during her first months of training as an agent. Don’t be so dramatic. You look great.

  <>

  Socialator was a Betazoid euphemism for prostitute. As much as Sarina wanted to laugh at her friend’s expense, she concentrated on keeping her face slack and emotionless, and her eyes on her padd, as she projected her thoughts back at Deel. You’re too smart to be a socialator. Now, if you’re done feeling sorry for yourself—

  <>

  All in due time, Ilirra. They made contact with Julia
n last night.

  That revelation added focus and intensity to Deel’s mental voice. <>

  It was Cole. He all but rolled out the red carpet for him.

  Across the path, Deel looked one way and then the other, as if searching for her absent connection, but her thoughts remained focused on Sarina. <>

  He played hard to get, like we planned.

  <> Deel feigned a disappointed sigh and stuffed her hands in her jacket’s pockets. <>

  Sarina tapped on the screen of her padd. I’m aware of that. But the Andorians crapped on the plan when they sprang him from jail, and zh’Tarash flushed what was left of it when she pardoned him. If Julian accepts Thirty-one’s invitation without a good reason, they’ll know something’s up. If you want me to get him inside, I’ll need to give him a better cover story.

  <>

  We’ve already got one worked out. If it flies, I should have him inside Thirty-one by tomorrow morning.

  <>

  Sarina stood, tucked her padd inside her handbag, and walked away.

  Then it’s been nice working with you, Ilirra.

  * * *

  Bashir’s enhanced hearing picked up the sound of Sarina’s footsteps while she was still outside their villa’s front door, crossing the walkway from the landing platform where they parked their personal transport pods. By the time she opened the front door, he had prepared himself for the scene they had planned the night before, under the cover of their sensor-jamming, synthetically produced cone of forced privacy. Everything they had worked toward for the past three years, all he had sacrificed in the name of conscience and duty, would be forfeit unless they played their roles perfectly in the next few minutes.