Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice by James Swallow

Author:James Swallow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Star Trek, Fiction
ISBN: 9781476722276
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2013-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

The air-cab banked gently as it pulled into a shallow turn over the river Thames, arrowing through London’s late-afternoon sky. A light wind hummed over the windows as the flyer’s blunt prow moved to take up a path that would follow the line of Westminster Bridge, calm and unhurried toward the hotel in Holland Park where Deanna Troi had taken rooms for the evening.

The crisp, clear air meant that the view of the Houses of Parliament and the tower of Big Ben was sharp and perfect, and Deanna instinctively reached out to tap her daughter on the shoulder, intending to bring her attention to the city’s ageless icons. But she halted, her hand resting over Tasha’s shoulder; the four-year-old was fast asleep, her head resting against the opposite window, one hand clutching the plush toy raven she had picked up at the Tower of London.

Troi smiled, delighted by the simple normality of the moment—and then she stifled a yawn herself. It had been a long day, she reflected. Out to East Anglia in the morning to see where members of the Troi family had once lived, then crisscrossing the city to visit the sights, willfully going astray in backstreets filled with curious little shops and buildings that were half a millennium old or more. It had been easy to lose herself in Tasha’s enthusiasm for the new for a few hours, just to get away from the cheerless mood that seemed to have cast itself across everything else.

A soft, melodic chime sounded from a pocket in her tunic, and Troi grabbed for the comm padd there, silencing it before it could wake her daughter. The device’s screen showed a Starfleet crest and a numeric code indicating a signal relay from off-world. A frown threatened to gather, but she pushed it aside. “Troi here,” she said.

The display switched to an image of Christine Vale, in uniform and seated before what appeared to be a window looking out onto warp space. “Deanna. I’m glad I got you. Can you talk?”

“Of course. Is something wrong?”

Vale leaned in toward the image pickup. “Wait a second.” She did something at a panel by her hand, and the image quality lessened, the sound taking on a tinny resonance; Vale had activated an encryption subroutine at her end of the transmission. “Okay. Where are you now?”

“A few hundred feet up over Hyde Park.” She shot a glance at the air-cab’s pilot behind a glass partition, who seemed unaware of the conversation going on behind him. “I’m in London with Tasha. We’re . . . taking a day or two.”

“Make the most of it,” Vale told her. “Shore leave never lasts as long as it should.”

“You’re not on the Titan,” said Troi, a note of concern entering her voice. “Is there a problem?”

Vale very deliberately did not address her first statement. “I’ve got some things I need to ask you. I’m going to need your help.” The commander’s body language spoke volumes; Troi knew that intense, focused expression of old.

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