Angling the landskimmer into a narrow valley formed by the cleft of two deep arroyos, Strong said, “I still don’t understand how that happened, sir. The only time all three of us have been in the same room was when we were each trying to outbid the other. We took different rooms, never crossed paths. Secured channels on our communicators so we didn’t even have to meet. Doesn’t make sense they could have figured out who we are, you ask me. Hey, Thex,” Strong angled his head up, talking to the roof, “how did you say they made us?”
“All I know is we were set up for a meet today with the Syndicate representatives. So I’m at the bar, waiting.”
Halak half-turned. “And?”
“Two men—a Ryn and a Naiad—were gossiping with a waitress about how they’d heard there were Starfleet people nosing around about the Syndicate. The waitress dismissed it. Said they didn’t know what they were talking about, that she’dheard the Syndicate hadn’t made the Starfleet people at all, but the Qatalahad. Said there were three of them and that a Qatala man, one of the old-timers, recognized one of them.”
Halak felt his stomach bottom out. Damn, damn.Someone had recognized him. That was the only explanation. And he’d been so close…
“Couldn’t be one of us,” said Strong. His brows mated over the bridge of his nose. “We haven’t had anything to do with the Qatala, just the Syndicate guys. Unless Starfleet Intelligence decided to keep an eye on us, and one of them got made. They do that, you know: spies spying on spies. Anyway, it couldn’t have been us, Thex. You heard wrong.”
“My hearing was perfect,” said Thex. “Isperfect.”
No. Halak chewed on the soft inner flesh of his cheek. Thex hadn’t been wrong; he just didn’t know. Neither did Strong. None of this was about red ice. Marta Batanides had been very clear about Halak’s real mission, one that even Connors didn’t know because if something went wrong, only Halak—and not Starfleet—would take the fall.
This was all about the Cardassians.
The facts. The Cardassians had been on a massive expansion kick for the last decade, from their failed attempt to claim Legara IV in 2327 and their annexation of Bajor in ’28 to their current wrangling with the Klingon Empire for Raknal V. They’d been expanding, flexing their muscles by conquering smaller, non-Federation worlds nudging the border. There was every reason to believe that the Cardassians wouldn’t stop there. But, in order to take on the Federation, the Cardassians needed more and better weapons.
Fact: The Breen made weapons. Good weapons, advanced weapons, such as type-3 disruptors. SI operatives had reports of Breen weapons turning up on Ryn III, probably bound for Cardassia. No one knew for sure.
Fact: well, a rumor, really. The buzz was that the Breen had developed cloaking technology superior to the Klingons. Bad enough. But there were also rumors swirling around that the Breen had succeeded in testing out prototypes of a new weapon designed to dissipate focused phased energy. The upshot? More energy discharge per volley, with greater range and less dissipated radiant energy than current Starfleet technology. Translation: more bang for the buck, and without a lot of spare change.
Fact: The Breen hated dealing with other species, period. The Breen were nonaligned. They were secretive, isolated. Duplicitous. Betazoids couldn’t get a read on them, and the Breen shielded their bodies in refrigerated encounter suits that duplicated the ambient conditions of their frozen waste of a homeworld. One might have been tempted to call them cold-blooded but for the belief that the Breen didn’t have a drop of blood, of any color or description, flowing in their nonexistent veins.
Fact: Profit was profit. If the Breen were going to get at Cardassian wealth, they’d need a middleman.
And that’s where the Syndicate came in. The likely scenario was that the Syndicate provided the Breen with runners and pilots who would do the work, for a very hefty fee, of ferrying weapons bound for Cardassia. In turn, the Syndicate would make sure that any dealings were the Breen were one step removed.
And that’s where Halak came in. Pose as a freelancer. Make contact with a dealer who needed a ship to transport Breen materiel into Cardassian space. Figure out to whom the dealer reported—the Syndicate, or the Qatala—and then get a read on the weapons distribution hierarchy.
Yet, somehow, someonehad made Halak. He’d thought Farius Prime was far enough away from Ryn III, but it seemed he’d been wrong.
So who? He cast his mind over the possibilities. The Ryn weapons dealer he discarded on the spot. Halak had funneled data on the weapons dealer back to Starfleet Intelligence on a secured channel and discovered that the man was a native, had never left the planet.
“Well,” he said finally, “what matters now is that we get off the planet and back to the Barkerwithout the Ryn fleet on our tail. Then we regroup and figure out what went wrong.”
In a few minutes, Strong banked the landskimmer right, and angled into a narrow canyon between high sheer cliffs to which low clumps of scrub clung. Halak scanned the jagged, rocky ridges but saw no one. Then Halak spotted the shuttle, a class two—capacity of four passengers; max speed, warp two. Fast enough. Ryn scouts could only make warp one-point-five. Quickly, his eyes ran over the exterior, looking for signs of damage. There were none.
“All right, go.” Signaling for Strong to kill the engine, Halak snapped open his side of the landskimmer and scrambled out. “Go, go, let’s go.”
They piled into the shuttle, Halak dropping into the pilot’s chair, and Strong into the seat next to him. Thex took over monitoring their onboard systems. After a cursory check, Halak punched the shuttle’s engines.
In a few moments, Ryn III had fallen away beneath them. Halak was never so happy to see the backside of a planet before in his life. Then, two minutes later, as they passed Ryn III’s near moon and went to warp, Thex said, “Something here, Commander.”
Hell.“What? A scout?”
Strong shook his head. “Nothing on external scan. No sign of pursuit.”
“That’s not it,” said Thex. He looked up, his sky-blue features pulled in a frown. “I’m getting a signal.”
“Signal?” asked Halak. Barker ’s too far away. They don’t even know we’re off-world yet.“Is it a hail?”
“No, sir, that’s just it. It’s,” Thex’s fingers played over his console, “sir, it’s coming from us.”
“What?” Halak spun around in his chair. “Say again?”
“Us.It’s like we’resending out a signal.” Thex’s eyes, baby blue like his skin, widened. “A homing beacon.”
“They must have found the ship,” said Strong, the color draining from his face like water from a leaky bucket. His voice was high and tight. “Someone must have found the ship parked around the moon, planted a homing beacon.”
“But who?” asked Thex. “Why not board it? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Worry about what makes sense later,” Halak rapped. “First, we shut it down. Thex, can you jam it?”
“Trying, sir,” said Thex. He gritted his teeth as if a physical effort on his part would, magically, push his commands through. After a moment, he shook his head. His antennae knotted, unfurled. Kinked. “Negative. I can’t. It’s not routed through our communications system. In fact, I’m not sure where…”
“The engines,” said Halak suddenly. That’s what I would do; make it inaccessible.“Check the engines, the power couplings.”
Thex’s brow crinkled even as he moved to comply. “The engines? I don’t…got it. Left nacelle, main power coupling. It’s a subspace transponder, Commander, tied into the antimatter injector. No way to disable it without dropping out of warp.”
“Probably programmed to activatewhen we went to warp.”