Star Trek: Typhon Pact 04 - Paths of Disharmony Read online

  “No!” Worf shouted, and Choudhury heard him scrambling to his feet as he gave chase. She knew he was fast and possessing of great stamina, and more than capable of overtaking her in any prolonged footrace, but could he catch her in just the few dozen meters separating her from the stone edifice? Choudhury already heard his heavy footfalls in the dirt behind her but ignored them, pushing ahead with all her remaining strength. She could not help smiling, sensing the same exhilaration she might once have felt as a child engaged in playground games. Then an excited laugh escaped her lips as she plunged through the aperture and into the structure.

  “Yes!”

  The edifice’s interior lit up in response to her entry, soft illumination cast from sources positioned at each of the room’s four corners and revealing the only thing the building contained. It was a pedestal, seemingly formed from the same type of stones used to create the structure itself, and atop which sat a massive expanse of tablet fashioned from a single piece of what to Choudhury appeared to be polished granite. Set into the top of the slab were rows of multicolored jewels, each one placed with utmost precision at equal distances from one another as well as the larger, rounded crystal positioned at the slab’s center. Still running at near-full speed as she crossed the ground toward the pedestal, Choudhury reached out and slammed her hand down upon the larger crystal.

  “Contest over,” said the feminine voice of the Enterprise’s main computer. “Winner: Lieutenant Choudhury.”

  She turned, beaming, as Worf entered the structure. Dirt covered much of his uniform, and some of his long hair had come loose from the thong he used to secure it away from his face. There was no anger in his expression or even bitterness over the computer’s cold, matter-of-fact pronouncement. Instead, he stood near the structure’s entrance and nodded in unrestrained approval.

  “A fine victory,” he said, sounding not the least bit out of breath.

  Choudhury herself was panting as she leaned against the pedestal for support. “Thanks,” she said, nodding. She held up a hand, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “You changed the simulation, didn’t you? The goons were more difficult this time around.” Pausing, she drew several deep breaths before adding, “Each one seemed to get better as I went along.”

  Nodding, Worf replied, “I programmed the simulation to evaluate your skills and technique, and to apply lessons learned each time you defeated an opponent. The computer then factored that analysis into its calculations when generating a new adversary to send out against you. However, I also added a threshold that the program could not exceed. You reached that level with your sixth opponent. Had you faced a seventh attacker rather than me, you would have found that the difficulty level had reached its limit.”

  “I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention, Worf,” Choudhury replied, shaking her head before releasing a tired chuckle. Her breathing had almost returned to normal, and the immediate aches and discomfort she had felt in her muscles from the prolonged exertion were already beginning to fade. Of course, she knew the real pain would come tomorrow. Nothing a hot bath and a nice bottle of wine won’t cure.

  Stepping closer, Worf appraised her with an expression of stark admiration. “Your progress with the bat’leth, as well as your mok’bara training, has been exemplary, Jasminder. I am proud to have been your teacher.” He paused after the last word, his features warming as he regarded her.

  “That’s not all you’re proud to be, is it?” Choudhury asked, allowing a hint of suggestion to lace the question.

  Worf shook his head. “Not at all.” The faintest of smiles tugged at the corners of his mouth, but he remained where he stood, his hands at his sides. Despite his stoic demeanor, Choudhury saw what lurked just beneath the surface of the Klingon’s practiced façade. In addition to making for one hell of an efficient team as members of the Enterprise’s senior staff, the past year had also served to strengthen the personal bond they now shared. What had begun as her simply needing the emotional and physical support of someone she trusted had evolved into something far surpassing any relationship she previously had enjoyed. Worf, who at first had expressed some anxiety over the intimacy they had shared insofar as it clashed with the traditions of his people, had finally come to terms with such concerns. He and Choudhury had allowed things to progress at a natural pace, each mindful of the other’s feelings, to the point that the time they shared, along with everything else, simply felt, as ship’s counselor Hegol Den described it to her during one of their frequent discussions on the topic, “right.”

  Choudhury moved to stand close enough that she could place her hand on Worf’s broad chest. “You know what else you are?”

  “No,” Worf answered, playing the game.

  Choudhury bobbed her eyebrows as she looked up at him, her hand reaching for his uniform’s front closure. “The loser. Now pay up.”

  The bath and the wine could wait.

  4

  “Almost there. Just a little bit more. Easy now. Yeah, that’s it.”

  Standing just to the port side of the Enterprise’s main deflector-dish assembly, Commander Geordi La Forge leaned back so he could look up through the faceplate of his environmental suit’s helmet. The chief engineer held his right hand out and away from his body, his fingers unconsciously moving as though he were wielding the controls of the Starfleet workbee hovering just overhead. In his left hand he held a tricorder, and his attention was divided between the device and the maintenance craft as it maneuvered ever closer to the ship. He watched as the workbee spun on its axis, the clusters of tractor-beam emitters also shifting as they grasped the deflector’s replacement particle emitter.

  As the workbee stopped its rotation, the voice of its pilot, Lieutenant Var joresh Dahk, sounded in La Forge’s ears, breaking up the monotonous tones of his own breathing as it echoed inside the helmet. “How’s that?”

  La Forge held up his free hand with his thumb extended so that the Tellarite pilot could see him through the work-bee’s cockpit canopy. “Looks good. Keep it coming like that.” Taking his attention away from the small maintenance craft, he directed his gaze toward the other side of the deflector array and the suited figure standing there. The engineer’s view was partially obscured by the thick black cable connecting the emitter to the deflector housing, and for a moment he watched as the line—which actually was a shielded conduit housing power relays as well as wiring for connecting the emitter to the Enterprise computer’s optical data network—went taut once again, pulling in the slack created as the workbee pushed forward. “How are we looking, Taurik?”

  Positioned beyond the base of the deflector dish and also holding a tricorder, Lieutenant Commander Taurik replied, “The umbilical cabling is retracting normally, Commander. All connections are active and appear to be operating within expected parameters.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” La Forge said, nodding in approval. Though the installation of the new emitter was a routine task performed by one of the crews assigned to the Farber Station maintenance facility positioned in geosynchronous orbit above Australia, he had exercised his chief engineer’s prerogative in order to oversee the installation himself. Getting his hands on one of the upgraded particle emitters and installing it had been on his list of goals for general ship improvements for months. According to the specifications he had read in a Starfleet technical journal devoted to the latest advances and enhancements for Sovereign-class vessels, the upgraded unit would offer a broader range of configurations as well as allow greater power to be channeled to it from the ship’s warp engines. Many of the improvements to the emitter’s design had come from lessons learned in harsh fashion during various engagements with the Borg, and relayed to Starfleet Command via reports submitted by chief engineers aboard starships throughout the quadrant. Considering how many times La Forge had been called upon to rig the deflector to channel power in some unorthodox manner for one reason or another—and almost always while trying to resolve an emergency situation or dea
l with a threat to the Enterprise—if a new model of the unit was available, then he wanted it.

  La Forge’s wants and desires aside, the Enterprise’s mission tempo had been such that coordinating time at a starbase or other facility along with obtaining one of the new emitters and having it transported to that location had proven difficult. He had almost given up on the idea until the ship’s next scheduled biennial maintenance cycle. It was fortunate happenstance that a scheduling window at Farber Station coincided with the starship’s unplanned visit to Earth. No sooner had La Forge heard about the abrupt change of orders than he dispatched a subspace communiqué to the facility’s commanding officer, requesting the new particle emitter be made available for installation upon the Enterprise’s arrival.

  Stepping back as the bottom of the particle emitter dropped closer to the socket where it would rest within the deflector assembly’s housing, La Forge motioned with his free hand toward the workbee. “Almost there.”

  “Commander,” Dahk said over the comm frequency, “the sensors and associated instrumentation installed into this craft are operating within acceptable parameters.” When he spoke La Forge noted the less-than-subtle hint of irritation in the Tellarite’s voice.

  The chief engineer looked up to the workbee and offered what he hoped was a disarming smile. “Not trying to tell you how to do your job, Lieutenant. I’m just a bit of a mother hen where my ship’s concerned. Call it an old habit.”

  Rather than offer an intelligible reply, Dahk merely grunted, continuing to maneuver the workbee closer. A few seconds later, La Forge watched the emitter settle into the socket. He felt a series of small reverberations emanating from the hull plates and into the soles of his boots as, one after another, each of the twelve locking clamps closed around the assembly’s base, securing the component into its proper place.

  “That’s it,” he said, nodding. “Nice work, Dahk.”

  By way of reply, the lieutenant maneuvered the workbee up and away from the deflector array before tilting the craft so he had an unobstructed view of La Forge standing on the hull. Inside the cockpit, Dahk raised his right hand to his temple, offering an informal salute.

  “Happy to be of service, Commander,” the Tellarite replied, its gruff voice still offering a tinge of annoyance at La Forge’s hands-on supervision of the installation. “Is there anything else you require?”

  La Forge shook his head. “I think we can take it from here, Lieutenant. Thanks for your help.”

  “Very well, Commander,” Dahk replied. “Safe journey to your ship and crew.”

  As the workbee backed farther away from the ship, the chief engineer turned to his pair of assistants. “Okay. Taurik, Veldon, engage magnetic constrictors,” he ordered. Turning from the array, he made his way with slow, deliberate steps across the hull to one of the three independent magnetic interlock control consoles positioned along the outer rim of the dish housing the deflector. A computer display screen was waiting for him there, with the message “MAGLOCK SYSTEMS OFF-LINE.” It took only a handful of commands keyed into the console’s manual interface to change the status to “MAGLOCK ONE ENGAGED.”

  Across the deflector dish from him, Taurik was bent over one of the other consoles. “Maglock Two engaged, Commander.”

  “Maglock Three engaged, as well, sir,” said Lieutenant Veldon, one of the junior specialists assigned to the Enterprise’s engineering team. Even with the distance separating them, La Forge could see the hint of vapor clouding the inside of the Benzite’s helmet. Her environmental suit had been configured to provide her with an atmospheric mixture approximating conditions on her home planet.

  “I’d say that’s it for the hard part,” La Forge said.

  Reaching for her own tricorder as she bent back over her console, Veldon replied, “Initiating diagnostic program now to confirm all the connections are secure.”

  “We might need to make a few settling-in adjustments,” La Forge said. Even though the components designed for Sovereign-class starships—and, indeed, many of the systems incorporated into the different models of Starfleet vessels—were intended to be interchangeable to facilitate efficient installation and repair, it had been the chief engineer’s experience that not everything always proceeded according to that well-intentioned master plan.

  Reaching for his suit’s communications controls, he keyed a new frequency. “La Forge to Commander Worf.” At last report, the first officer was off duty and had informed the engineer of his intention to undertake one of his preferred calisthenics drill simulations—complete with bat’leths at the ready—on the holodeck with Lieutenant Choudhury. For a moment, La Forge wondered if Worf, perhaps engaged in simulated combat against a holographically created enemy, would even answer the call.

  As it happened, there was a noticeable delay before the Klingon’s deep voice rang in La Forge’s helmet. “Worf here.”

  “I know you’re off duty, Commander,” the engineer said, “but you asked to be updated when the particle emitter was installed. We’ve got it in place, and we’re running through the final adjustments and diagnostic checks now. I figure another hour once we get back inside and run the last few installation protocols from engineering, and we’ll be set.”

  “Thank you for the report, Commander,” Worf replied. There was a slight pause, during which La Forge sensed the first officer was waiting for him to say something, before he added, “Is there anything else?”

  Unable to resist the opening, the chief engineer said, “If you’ve got time, I was just checking to see if you might want to come out here and review the installation for yourself.”

  The grunt of mild irritation, low as it was, still managed to get conveyed through the open comm channel. “That will not be necessary, Mr. La Forge,” Worf said after a moment. “I have full confidence in your ability to oversee the task to its proper completion.”

  La Forge smiled even though the Klingon could not see it. Worf’s dislike of any activity that might require him to venture outside the confines of the ship into the zero-gravity environs of open space was legendary aboard the Enterprise. “Well, okay,” he said, allowing a bit more of his gentle ribbing into his voice. “If you say so.”

  “He says so!” answered the higher-pitched and noticeably irritated voice of Jasminder Choudhury, catching La Forge only slightly by surprise. “Worf out!” The last word was punctuated by a snap of static as the connection was severed.

  The laugh La Forge released was short and full of mischief. “Uh-oh. I guess she meant it when he said he was off duty. Looks like I’m in trouble.”

  Taurik’s arching right eyebrow was visible through the Vulcan’s helmet faceplate. “I presume that you mean your call interrupted Commander Worf and Lieutenant Choudhury’s . . . extracurricular activities?”

  “I don’t know if I’d put it quite that way,” La Forge countered. “Or any way, for that matter.” While the relationship between Worf and Choudhury was no secret, the two officers still had endeavored to maintain discretion, if for no other reason than they valued their privacy. “Probably better for all of us if we didn’t bring this up the next time we see either of them.”

  Not that it will stop Choudhury from trying to dissect me with that bat’leth of hers.

  5

  In Picard’s experience, the interval separating a high-ranking official’s “being ready” to do something and that activity actually occurring varied, often to absurd degrees. Though arranged with the noblest of intentions, the schedules that defined such a person’s agenda on any given day often were crowded to the point of bursting, with overworked assistants struggling to find some previously undiscovered slice of time into which a new appointment or matter requiring their superior’s attention could be fit.

  Such appeared to be the case with President Bacco, at least today.

  So far as Picard had been able to determine, during just the few short minutes it had taken for the Palais de la Concorde’s Starfleet transporter control center
to authorize his being beamed from Labarre to Paris, the president obviously had been confronted by at least one such interruption. Though he wore no chronometer on his wrist and there were no such timekeeping devices in the foyer outside Bacco’s office, he was certain that he had been waiting here for nearly half an hour.

  Maybe I should have walked.

  Picard sobered as he considered what might have seen fit to disrupt the president’s already-hectic day. An emergency on one of the numerous planets still struggling with reconstruction a year after the Borg invasion? Some bit of posturing by one of the adversarial interstellar powers? Something else entirely? At the very least, Picard took comfort in knowing that it could not be the Borg presenting some kind of renewed danger. If indeed they did pose a risk, he was certain he would be aware of it.

  It took him an extra moment to realize that he had been sitting in the president’s reception area, his eyes closed as he . . . what? Listened for some sign of life from what had been the Collective?

  They’re gone, he reminded himself. Dead, and gone to dust. Leave them there.

  “Captain Picard?”

  Opening his eyes with a start, Picard looked up to see Sivak, President Bacco’s personal assistant, standing just a few steps away from him. He was dressed in a dark, formal two-piece ensemble that featured script embroidered in his native language over the left breast. Though Picard possessed a rudimentary understanding of certain Vulcan dialects, the symbols on Sivak’s attire were lost on him. How had he failed to register the aide’s arrival in the foyer? “Yes,” Picard said, rising to his feet and straightening his uniform jacket. “My apologies, Mr. Sivak. I was lost in thought for a moment.”