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Star Trek: The Next Generation Infiltrator # 42Chapter One"THAT'S THE SHIP," Maria Sukhoi told her husband. She pointed to the white needle on the spaceport's flight pad. "The Temenus. It launches in eight hours."Lee nodded. "Eight hours. They changed their plan. Do you think they suspect?"Mafia shook her head. The midnight air had made her black hair damp, and it clung to her forehead in loose strands. "Central's always suspicious, but it doesn't have a reason to suspect us."Lee grinned crookedly, white teeth in a dark broad face. "I'm just nervous.""You'd damned well better be," Marla said. Security around the spaceport was good, and Lee carried a half- dozen thumbnail bombs in his pocket. "Too many things can go wrong.""Cheerful tonight, aren't you?" He reached out and stroked her cheek. "'So lovely fair, that what seem'd fair in all the world seem'd now mean.' I'll be back for you." "I know." The quote from Milton--Adam's descrip- tion of Eve, another type of firstborn--warmed her as it always did. She kissed him. "Now get going.""Right." Lee hurried down the slope. Despite his words Mafia did not think she would see him again. His chances of sabotaging the Temenus were good, but his chances of survival were poor. A sense of loss and sorrow welled up in her, only to fade out before it could overwhelm her. Damn the originators, she thought. The changes that the genetic engineers had made in her people made it all but impossible for the people of Hera to sustain an intense emotion. She was able to view Lee's impending death with a sense of detachment that seemed to reduce the love she felt for him.Maria turned away and jogged back to town. She was not afraid of being observed. Central Security had de- cided that extra surveillance would only alert the subver- sives to the start of Operation Unity, so Central had gambled by not increasing its activities around the spaceport. By the same token, only the people who had to know about Captain Blaisdell's secret orders had been told about Unity. Mafia Sukhoi, who ran the Olympus Spaceport, was one of those people.And now I'm a traitor and a murderer, she thought. So be it. When she had learned about Unity she had discussed its implications with Lee. They had concluded that if Unity succeeded it would provoke the primels into destroying Hera, and that would lead to the loss of their family, along with everything else. They could not count on the resistance movement to stop Unity, so they would have to do it themselves. Logic left them no other course.Even so, she did not want to kill the Temenus's crew. She wished that she were smart enough to think of an alternative.Merle reached her home as the sun rose. She woke the children and got their breakfast ready. Gregor, the younger of her two boys, waited until Mafia had her hands full before he brought up a problem. "I didn't finish my math homework last night."Marla wondered why six-year-olds liked to leave their problems for the worst possible moment. "Anna, can you take care of this?" she asked."Okay. Come on, Geeken" Anna took her younger brother by the ear--a maneuver she had picked up in her aggression classes--and pulled him over to the dining room table. Mafia watched in disapproval; the classes were supposed to teach children to suppress their aggressive instincts, not give in to them.Anna put the boy's school pad in front of him and called up his calculus assignment. "What's the prob- lem?""This one," Gregor said, jabbing a finger onto the pad. "Gotta integrate e to the minus x squared. I can't do it.""Nobody can," Anna said. She spoke with all the authority of a ten-year-old. "It's an undefined operation. You have to sneak up on it. Write the Taylor polynomial for e to the x, substitute minus x squared for x, and integrate the polynomial.""Teacher said we had to do it as an integral," Gregor protested.Joachim, the older boy, blew air out of his cheeks. "Then Write down that it's a trick question and solve it as a sigma series. They want you to learn to look at the questions, not just the answers."Maria put breakfast on the table while her children squabbled over Gregor's homework. At least the talk kept them from noticing that their father was missing. It was not unusual for Lee to leave early; he was a field geologist, and the children probably reasoned he was out testing another new piece of equipment. After they had eaten, Mafia bundled the children off to school, then went to the neighborhood tube station. The capsule that took her to the spaceport was empty, which suited her mood.The capsule brought her to the spaceport entrance, where she nodded to the guard and walked to her office. On her way across the green she passed the marble column that commemorated the spaceport workers killed in a primal attack three years ago. A damaged freighter had made an emergency landing at the space- port, and while repairs were made to the ship its crew had realized what the Herans were. The primals had gone berserk and killed several people with their phasers before they were stamped out.Once inside her office Marla settled into her daily routine. The computer delivered reports to her in order of importance. Combat Operations had spotted a Romulan ship outside the Heran system; analysis sug- gested it was heading home after a routine exploratory flight. A primal ship was en route to the sector to lay a series of communication and navigation beacons; Oper- ations wanted a warshit, readied to shadow it, in case the primals made trouble. The three robot warships of the Special Reserve were to be activated and deployed for maneuvers in deep space. The Hephaestus Institute needed to borrow a courier for a test of its long-range transporter system.Maria ground her way through the work, half- expecting to see a security report. She found none, but that meant nothing. Central Security kept a tight lid on reports of sabotage and other forms of dissidence. Lee might have been caught at once, and her first hint would come when she was arrested.A glint of light caught Marla's eye, and when she looked out her office window she saw the white needle that was the Temenus rising into the clear morning sky. A wave of guilt made her look away. If all went well, Lee's bombs would go off in six days and the ship would vanish. But if all went well, Central Security would never know if Temenus had been lost to an accident or sabotage--or an attack by the primals. The uncertainty should make them hesitant about trying Unity again.Or so she hoped. She didn't understand the Modality. Over the past few years the Heran government had grown more secretive, more authoritarian. It had revived the originators' dream of conquering the old human race, and that threatened to bring destruction down on Hera.Chapter TwoCaptain's log, stardate 47358.1 The Enterprise has en- tered sector 11381, a reportedly uninhabited portion of the galaxy that the Federation is opening to colonization. Accordingly the Enterprise has been ordered into this sector to lay a series of communication and navigation beacons. As the beacons incorporate some experimental computer technology, we have been joined by a cyber- neticist from the Daystrom Institute. Although quite young, Dr. Kemal comes highly recommended and has already shown a remarkable talent for enhancing the Enterprise's computer programs.ASTRID KEMAL TRIPPED over her own feet as she walked into the Ten-Forward lounge. Most of Guinan's patrons politely ignored her as she stumbled, but Worf growled with embarrassment. He had invited the cyberneticist to join him and two of his security troops for lunch, and her clumsiness grated on his innate sense of dignity. A Klingon warrior was not seen in public with--he re- called a human word that one of his security ensigns had used--a klutz.One of the two ensigns seated at the table with Worf showed less restraint in his reaction. "I told you so!" K'Sah crowed as he gave Sho Yamato a punch in the arm. "Pay up!"Worf growled at K'Sah while Yamato rubbed his upper arm. The massive Pa'uyk resembled a poisonous, shaggy spider with pincerlike hands at the ends of its four arms, but Worf felt unintimidated by the creature. "I dislike your gambling," the Klingon rumbled.K'Sah ignored the hint. "How could I pass up a sucker bet?" he said. The chitinous tips of his four legs tapped merrily on the deck. "Besides, Sho's buying you a drink, too.""A bet is a bet," Yamato said in agreement. He signaled one of the bartenders, then looked at Kemal. She stood at the bar, ordering a drink from Guinan. "Lieutenant," he wondered, "is Dr. Kemal always this ?.. artless?""No," Worf said curtly. That was literally true. She had been on the Enterprise for over a week, and he knew of one occasion on which she had not stumbled. That had been when she entered his security office today to work on his computer subsystems. He regretted that he had no witnesses. "Do not accept any more bets on her performance," he warned Yamato."Yes, sir," Yamato said, and looked at K'Sah. "I thought that bet seemed peculiar," Yamato remarked.K'Sah clacked his serrated mandibles in mockery. "Let that be a lesson to you. Never bet against me." Despite his friendly tone his words seemed threatening. Worf told himself that must be a false impression. The Pa'uyk world had only recently contacted the Federa- tion, and no one seemed to have much knowledge of their customs and manners. K'Sah himself would say nothing useful about his people, even though he was temporarily under Worf's command as an exchange officer from the Pa'uyk military; K'Sah took the rea... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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