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  “You disapprove,” Luluma said.

  Shaking her head, Sarjenka replied, “I didn’t say that.” Even as she spoke the words, however, her eyes were drawn to the Lisqual moving around and past their group. Across the promenade, she saw a man emptying refuse from a collection container. Was he working honestly—or as a conscript to the government? She caught sight of two delivery workers and then a female conducting maintenance on some form of utility junction. Passing by her side along the walkway was a courier.

  Were any of these people of their own mind, or were they simply programmed drones? The very notion of imposing such unnatural restrictions on free will across a segment of the populace—even if it happened to be the least desirable segment—ran counter to everything she believed as a healer.

  “Your silence speaks volumes, young woman,” Luluma said after a moment before looking away. When she returned her attention to the Starfleet officers, there was a new conviction in her eyes. “Please know that my role in this process is as a physician. I and other doctors like me oversee the implantation procedures, and I do so because I truly care for the life and safety of each reformant. If you can refrain from judging my people in undue haste, you can help me care for them as they deserve.”

  “What sort of help are you looking for?” Gomez asked. Though Sarjenka was certain the commander still harbored misgivings, she apparently had set them aside for the time being.

  When the doctor answered this time, her words were laced with fatigue and perhaps even a hint of resignation. “The reformants are being turned against us.”

  Chapter

  3

  Earth Year 2328

  Location: Moon Orbiting Delavi III

  Mission Elapsed Time: 1 Hour, 26 Minutes, 11 Seconds

  Lieutenant Gold pressed himself against the rough uneven surface of the tunnel’s rock wall, aiming his phaser rifle ahead of him as he peered down the passageway. The shadows cloaking the corridor less than thirty meters from where he stood were not moving, not this time, anyway. If Gold had learned anything in the ten minutes or so that had passed since Lieutenant Commander th’Sena’s decision to press on toward the outpost’s alleged command center, it was that the shadows could not be trusted.

  “This should be it,” said Lieutenant Augustus Bradford from where he stood to Gold’s left, leaning against the tunnel wall on the opposite side of the large pair of rather thick and heavy metal doors set into the rock. Bradford and his team—Lieutenant Mairin ni Bhroanin and a female Bolian ensign named Jolev—had fallen in with th’Sena’s team in one of the many corridor junctions that connected the outpost’s network of underground passages. Cradling his phaser rifle in the crook of his right arm so that the muzzle was aimed toward the door, Bradford eyed Gold with one of his typical mischievous grins. “You want to knock, or should I?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Lieutenant,” th’Sena said. “Given how things have gone so far, I’m not betting on the rest of this being easy.”

  While the Andorian was all business even during the best of times, Gold was sensing that the stress of the outpost infiltration was beginning to wear on her. They had encountered two more Cardassians as they proceeded deeper into the complex, and Gold had listened over his communicator at reports as other elements of the assault team also engaged new targets. The problem was that the number of soldiers discovered so far had surpassed the total as indicated by Starfleet Intelligence, and there were still some areas of the outpost left to secure. Several of the teams also had reported encountering scattering fields—electronic countermeasures designed to confound the efforts of scanners and sensors, which of course only served to further complicate the situation.

  “Anything inside?” Bradford asked, looking over to where Ensign Rha-Teramaet stood to Gold’s right, the muzzle of his phaser rifle pointed downward as the Efrosian consulted the tricorder he carried in his left hand. Though Gold and Bradford were friends dating back to their days at Starfleet Academy, and both had befriended ni Bhroanin upon their mutual assignment to the Gettysburg, Gold knew Jolev only in passing as a member of the ship’s security contingent. It was because of his long association with the other man that Gold could recognize when Bradford was getting restless.

  Teramaet shook his head. “Nothing registers beyond the door. There must be a scattering field in place here, too. For all I can tell, there’s nothing but solid rock behind that door.” Teramaet shook his head as he continued to study the unhelpful scan readings, having muted the tricorder’s audible emissions in the fading hope that it might aid to preserve the team’s stealth.

  Not that it mattered, as it seemed every Cardassian on this barren moon knew exactly where they were.

  The darkness at the far end of the passageway was shattered by the flare of a disruptor weapon, and Gold flinched at the sound of the blast as the energy bolt slammed into the rock wall above him. Ducking in what was a futile attempt to seek cover, he felt something hot slice into his left arm. Grunting in pain, he dropped to one knee and lost the grip on his phaser rifle as he clamped his right hand over his now pain-racked left bicep. White heat overloaded his vision for several seconds, but all around him the clamor of phasers being brought to bear on the new threat echoed in the narrow corridor, along with several more disruptor bursts. He ignored the firefight erupting all around him, his vision already starting to clear, even as he felt blood seeping between his fingers.

  “David!” Bradford shouted over the reports of phaser fire, and Gold saw his still-indistinct figure turning from where he knelt near the wall and shuffling toward him. “Are you all right?”

  “Piece of rock,” Gold hissed through gritted teeth, barely audible over the last report of phaser fire. “Cut me right open.”

  As quickly as it had begun, the skirmish was over, near silence once again returning to engulf the corridor. After sending Jolev and Teramaet to investigate the source of the enemy fire, th’Sena looked to Bradford. “How is he?” the commander asked, moving closer and kneeling next to Gold.

  Reaching for the medical kit at the small of his back, Bradford shook his head. “Doesn’t look too bad. I can stop the bleeding and apply a dermal patch, which should be enough until we get back to the Gettysburg.” Patting Gold on the shoulder, “If you’re going to get injured, try to make it more interesting, or at least more serious. That way, you’ve got an excuse for them to send you home to that fancy house of yours.”

  Despite the dull throbbing pain in his arm, Gold managed a small smile. He and his wife, Rachel, had a small house in New York on Earth, though Gold himself hadn’t had much time to enjoy it. For a brief moment, he wondered what manner of interior decorating madness Rachel had unleashed in his absence.

  Gold heard footsteps coming up the passageway and looked up to see Teramaet and Jolev returning to the group. “Three Cardassians, sir,” Teramaet said, reporting to th’Sena. “At least, that’s who we found lying stunned up the corridor. Forgive me, Commander, but I seemed to have lost count as to how many that makes.”

  “Damn sight more than twenty-two,” Bradford said, not looking up as he pulled items from his medical kit.

  Moving to a sitting position so that he rested his back against the wall as Bradford treated his wound, Gold shook his head and considered the status of the mission. “I don’t suppose we can get a refund for this trip?”

  Earth Year 2377

  Location: Betrisius III

  “Captain? Captain Gold?”

  “What?” David Gold snapped, irritated as he was startled from his reverie. Of course, he was less annoyed with Soloman’s efforts to gain his attention than he was at his own behavior, angry with himself at his inability to keep his mind focused on the present rather than the past. Seeing the confused expression on the small lilac-skinned Bynar’s face was enough to tell him that he had—once again—entangled an innocent bystander in his latest bout of brooding.

  Get back to work, he scolded himself.

  “
I’m sorry, Soloman,” he said, turning from the window through which he had been studying the expanse of Gisela, the capital city of this, the most densely populated province on this continent of Betrisius III. Crossing to where the diminutive engineer had set up a temporary work space, Gold was struck once again by the blandness of the room’s interior. Located within a building chartered to the provincial government, to the captain it seemed as though the small unimpressive chamber was doing its part to foster the apparent universal constant that public-sector office space should aspire to nothing more than boredom and lifelessness.

  “Have you found something?” he asked as he moved to stand alongside Soloman, who seemed to already have shrugged off Gold’s brief outburst.

  Seated at a spare utilitarian desk, atop which he had placed the portable computer workstation he had requested from the da Vinci, the Bynar nodded as he replied, “I believe so, sir. I’ve successfully interfaced with the global computer network, and I’m presently scanning all current and recently archived communications and transactions.”

  “That was fast,” the captain observed.

  “I owe much to the assistance of Minister Qrana,” Soloman said, offering a respectful nod to the tall lean Lisqual male standing to his right.

  Looking to Gold, the minister bowed his head. “It was no effort, Captain. Your engineer performed the most complicated tasks.” The captain noted—not for the first time—that when filtered through his combadge’s universal translator, the Lisqual’s voice was rendered in a measured manner that to the captain’s ear sounded much like Soloman himself.

  It had not taken long for Gold to decide that Qrana, an assistant to the provincial governor and a member of the Ministry of Reformation which oversaw the corrections and rehabilitation departments within the regional government’s penal system, was not the most assuming of hosts. Greeting Gold during his first visit to the planet’s surface, the minister had served as his liaison—and self-appointed shadow—since then. His personality had alternated at irregular intervals between flat and brusque, which of course rubbed in just the right way against the captain’s already foul mood.

  “Where are we, Soloman?” Gold asked, turning his attention back to the matter at hand.

  His long thin fingers moving across the workstation’s interface pad, the Bynar engineer replied, “I’m detecting an unexplained level of communications activity across a number of the global network’s transfer hubs and ancillary connection nodes, for which there appear to be no authorization certifications or logs. For each legitimate operation being executed, there are dozens of additional command protocols embedded within the transfer packets.”

  Blinking at the avalanche of technical jargon, Gold said, “Can you please translate that to captain-speak?”

  Soloman actually smiled at that. “It appears that someone was using the global network to access the subsystems that oversee communications with the reformant community.”

  “Captain,” Qrana said, “we have known about this for some time. We believe that this is behind the protests I described to you earlier. What we have been unable to do up to this point is locate the source of the activity.”

  Gold nodded, recalling what the minister had told him about the recent series of disruptions caused by hundreds of reformants. At the midpoint of each day for the past eight days, hundreds of the monitored criminals had halted whatever they were doing and marched in unison to various public areas throughout the city. They impeded traffic, delayed the delivery of all manner of services, and essentially made nuisances of themselves. The actions were always peaceful, and ended at a precise interval that measured out to approximately sixty-eight standard minutes.

  Indicating his workstation, Soloman said, “That’s understandable, sir. The responsible party is utilizing a complex arrangement of encryption algorithms as well as data fragmentation and scattering subroutines. There’s also a process in operation that’s able to redirect these broadcasts to random transfer hubs throughout the network, while also supplying a varying number of requests to the system that appear to have no useful purpose whatsoever. It’s a most effective means of camouflaging their communications.”

  Stepping forward, Qrana regarded the stream of information scrolling across the computer screen, his dark eyes wide and with what to Gold appeared to be a new flush to his sea-green complexion. “My understanding is that you possess technology that can aid in tracking these signals to their source.”

  “In time, Minister,” Soloman replied. “Such a trace still requires us to have a basic understanding of the protocols currently in play, which I admit at this time is proving most challenging.”

  Gold frowned. “If I understood you before, you’re saying they’re putting out diversionary communications?”

  “In a manner of speaking, sir,” Soloman said, his fingers rapidly moving across the smooth surface of the workstation’s interface. “They add clutter and confusion to an already dense collection of continuous transactions and broadcasts, but in time I should be able to filter through some of it and isolate an example of one covert data stream.”

  He fell silent, and Gold watched the Bynar’s eyes flit in staccato movements as he assessed streams of data advancing at rapid clips across the computer screen. So far as the captain was concerned, the information appeared as little more than incomprehensible flashes of streaking light.

  “What is he doing?” Qrana asked.

  Gold nodded toward the workstation. “Interfacing directly with your network. He comes from a world where the people are literally integrated with their own planetary computer system. As a consequence, they’re able to access and correlate information at speeds comparable to the computers themselves.” It was a skill and talent that the captain had come to rely on from the young Bynar, who had remained with the da Vinci even after the tragic death of his life partner more than a year earlier.

  “Captain,” Soloman said after a moment, his eyes opening wide, “I believe I’ve found something of importance.” The data on the computer screen stopped scrolling, then shifted to an image of a cloaked figure, couched in shadow and standing before a featureless wall.

  “I come to you again as Jannim,” the figure said in a voice which to Gold’s ears sounded as though it was being subjected to some sort of artificial filtering. “As our leaders petition for membership in the United Federation of Planets, the time nears also for us to right a profane injustice against a large yet silent segment of our society. I speak, of course, about the so-called reformants.”

  Folding his arms across his chest, Gold frowned. “Well, there’s an interesting development.” As he spoke the words, he noted Qrana’s reaction to the transmission. Instead of the shock he only partly expected to see, the captain instead observed what he took as the minister’s embarrassment at watching the message.

  “Jannim,” Qrana said, shaking his head.

  “Our noble-minded attempts to bring an end to crime and to transform idle imprisonment into worthy public service must be recognized as a failure,” the cloaked figure said. “We must also confront the truth that this is an engineered failure brought about by the greed of the privileged and power of the abusive at the expense of the helpless. Someone must be the voice for those who have been rendered silent. Jannim will provide that voice.”

  Gold leaned closer until he was all but peering over Soloman’s shoulder. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “This is part of what you’ve been trying to trace?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the Bynar replied. “It is one of several prerecorded messages encoded into the data stream, and it currently is being directed to broadcast facilities in major population centers across this continent. From what I’m able to ascertain, it’s one component of a coordinated transmission, working in tandem with a flurry of new directive protocols currently being submitted through the global network.”

  Turning to regard Qrana, Gold saw growing nervousness in the Lisqual’s eyes. “Minister, who is this perso
n?”

  “A public nuisance, Captain,” Qrana replied, his brow furrowing. “A would-be demagogue who threatens us with alarming regularity. We do not respond to his threats and posturing.”

  Instinct told Gold things were not that simple. “But you’re more than willing to invite us into responding for you. According to your briefing, these reformant protests were a form of coordinated civil uprising, someone seeking a redress of grievances.” Pointing to the now-stilled image of the figure on the computer screen, he said, “What’s this Jannim person talking about?”

  “It is a complicated situation, Captain,” Qrana replied, “and there is much you still do not understand.”

  “Then perhaps you’d better start explaining it to me,” the captain snapped. It was becoming obvious to him that the minister and his peers had kept critical information about aspects of their society not only from him, but also the diplomatic teams that had come here to address the Lisqual’s petition for Federation membership. Further, that deceit had been compounded by their asking for assistance under apparently false pretenses.

  And now my people are stuck in the middle of it. Wonderful.

  “Reformants serve as a vital component to our society, Captain,” Qrana said, and Gold heard the first sign of indignation in the minister’s voice, though the actual words seemed to possess a rehearsed quality. “Some of them have skills and perform tasks that cannot be easily replaced.”