Star Trek: Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within by Christopher L. Bennett

Author:Christopher L. Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2011-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

4

TALAR SYSTEM

STARDATE 59908.7

“Have you found them?”

When Rennan Konya entered Beverly Crusher’s office, now occupied by a worried Picard and Endar (since the ambassador refused to lie in bed but Doctor Tropp had not allowed him to leave sickbay), the captain only barely managed to beat Endar to the question. Both of them had been standing here silently, sometimes pacing, sometimes pounding a wall with a fist—two men united in their anxiety for their families despite having very little to say to each other. Some of the Talarians in sickbay had begun the B’Nar mourning ritual, a sustained, high-pitched keening, upon hearing of the lives lost in the rebels’ gas attack—though the quick actions of Tropp and his team had prevented more fatalities. But Endar had asked them to defer the ritual out of respect for their hosts. Or perhaps he simply hadn’t wished to appear weak in front of them by openly expressing his fear and grief.

“No, sir,” the Betazoid lieutenant replied, shaking his sandy-haired head. “There’s significant sensor interference blanketing the entire district around M’leint, an area of thousands of square kilometers. And there are definitely no human life signs anywhere else on the planet or on any moon or asteroid within transporter range.”

“How is that possible?” Picard demanded. “Talarians don’t have the technology to block our sensors.” At the moment, the captain couldn’t care less about offending Endar by calling attention to his people’s lower technological level. But Endar didn’t seem to care much either.

“No, sir, they don’t. Nor should they have the technology to tune a transporter beam to the kind of power and focus that let those gas bombs penetrate the beaming shields.”

“Then who does have this technology?” Endar demanded. “And how could the female radicals have obtained it? They do not travel offworld.”

“Each individual technology’s signature is consistent with a number of different civilizations,” Konya said. “But put the two of them together, and the one likely possibility is the Tzenkethi.”

Picard and Endar traded an intense look. “The Tzenkethi do not share their technology,” Picard told the ambassador. “Except with their partners in the Typhon Pact.”

“No wonder the females have grown so brazen,” Endar growled. “These aliens are using them to destabilize our government. Overthrow it, replace it with one beholden to the Pact.”

“Robbing us of Talar as an ally,” Picard added, “just as they robbed the Federation of Andor.”

“This will not stand,” Endar declared. “They miscalculated, Picard. They stole my son from me, and your mate from you. I know that among your kind, the value of that loss rivals that of a son.”

“They have done that and more,” Picard said. Indeed, his fear of losing Beverly was great, a pain he had not known since three years ago when she had been believed dead at Kevratas. Nearly losing her then was what had prompted him to finally act on his long-repressed feelings for her and take her as his lover and then his wife. But what he felt now had levels he could not have imagined then.

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