continued,
"perhaps in the not-too-distant future, I will retire. I cannot continue
to be the sole contact between our worlds. I wish my aide to become
familiar with our negotiations."
"I see," Taryn said slowly. "Very well. Greetings, Soran."
"Greetings, Liaison Taryn," the young Vulcan said, raising a hand in
salute. "May you live long and prosper."
"Only if I can induce Vulcan to reduce their import tariffs!" the
Freelan shot back. "It is difficult to prosper under the crushing weight
of unfair tariffs!"
"As a matter of fact, tariffs were one subject I wished to explore
today," Sarek put in, smoothly. "May we begin?"
The cowled figure inclined his head. "Assuredly, Ambassador."
Soran observed, for the most part in silence, as the two diplomats went
over the trade agreements in question.
Sarek's mind was only partly on the subject at hand--with another
portion of his mind, he was going over his plans for later that
station-designated "night."
The two diplomats finished their discussion of tariffs, and went on to
discuss modifications to a long-standing trade agreement.
Taryn seemed slightly suspicious of Sarek's motives in bringing up that
particular agreement. "I must admit that I am surprised to hear you
reopen this topic," he said. "I had thought that the agreement we forged
regarding those cryo-memory inserts actually favored Vulcan. I fail to
see why you would wish to alter or revise it ... "
"The modifications I have in mind are minor, Liaison," Sarek said. "They
should not take long to discuss. Perhaps, after our talk, we could ...
have a game?"
"As you know, I am extremely busy," Taryn said, but then he hesitated.
"However, I must admit that you are one of the few players that I find
... stimulating. Very well, then. A game. When we are finished."
Sarek went ahead with his list of proposed changes to the trade
agreement. They were, as he said, minor, most of them points that they
had haggled over when the original agreement was forged, three years
ago. He actually found himself losing some ground in the negotiations,
partially because the was not devoting his full attention to the problem
at hand.
Finally, they were finished. Soran excused himself as both diplomats
keyed their terminals to produce a 3-D chess board. "Standard time limit
per move?" Sarek asked, after graciously accepting white at Taryn's
insistence.
"Of course."
The Vulcan studied the boards, planning his opening.
"I must warn you, Sarek," Taryn said, "our discussion has sharpened my
wits. Prepare to lose, Ambassador."
Sarek inclined his head in a half-bow. "I am prepared, Liaison." After a
moment's consideration, he moved a pawn. Taryn leaned forward, studying
his representation of the board, then made his own move. "You know," the
Freelan said, and the Vulcan gained the impression that he was confiding
something highly personal, "I truly do find our games ... stimulating."
"You mean 'challenging,'" Sarek said dryly.
"As I recall"--Taryn's mechanical tones did not vary, but the ambassador
thought he detected an edge in the quickness of the Freelan's retort--"I
won, the last time we played."
"Yes, so you did," Sarek said, evenly. "My game was definitely off that
day." He could not resist needling the liaison just a little. Taryn
could, at times, be induced to play recklessly. The Freelan hated to
lose, and Sarek had learned preci sely what it took to bait him until he
made a fatal mistake.
Sarek moved his knight onto the queen's level, then sat back to study
his opponent's reaction.
Taryn's answering move caused the Vulcan to raise an eyebrow.
"Stimulating indeed," he murmured, his mind running through moves and
their consequences with lightning speed, even as part of his brain
counted off the seconds remaining for him to reply to Taryn's bold
strategy.
"Perhaps ... challenging." With a swift, decisive movement he
transferred a rook to the king's level.
Taryn regarded the board, and Sarek thought he detected skepticism in
the mechanical voice. "Jobeck's gambit?" His cowl moved slightly, as
though he had shaken his head ruefully. "A human move ... and not a
particularly inventive one, at that. I will taste victory today." He
paused, his mitt hovering over the board as he considered his next move.
"A human gambit ... a surprising move for one of your kind to make,
Ambassador."
"My wife is Terran," Sarek said, "and I have spent many years on Earth.
I learned that gambit there. Humans may not possess Vulcan logic ... but
they can demonstrate surprisingly intricate strategy, at times."
"For myself, I have never had cause to respect their intelligence,"
Taryn commented, his mitt still hovering over the board. "Take this new
organization that has sprung up, for instance. The Keep Earth Human
League. From all reports, it consists of a collection of bigoted misfits
with stunted intellects. They detest all nonhumans ... even your
people, Ambassador."
Sarek had to guard against a betraying start of surprise. It was Taryn's
turn to needle him--almost as though the liaison knew why the ambassador
was here, hoping to gain proof for his theory about a Freelan conspiracy
...
"These fringe groups come and go," the Vulcan conceded blandly. "They
hardly pose a concern to the long-standing amity between Earth and
Vulcan."
"Of course not," Taryn said, sitting back in his seat, his shrouded head
level, as though he were staring directly into Sarek's face, searching
for any betraying emotions he might find there. "No one could hope to
alter such a close alliance."
Sarek raised an eyebrow. "Really, Liaison, you surprise me. If this is a
strategy on your part, I should think you could be more creative than to
attempt something so ... antiquated."
The Freclan's cowl jerked slightly, as if he had stiffened.
"Antiquated? What ... what do you mean?"
Sarek gestured at the board. "Why, engaging me in conversation while you
exceed your time limit for a move.
Or ... had you forgotten that it is your move?"
"My move ... oh, yes. Of course I had not forgotten." Taryn hastily
moved his bishop.
As the game progressed, Sarek tried with all his diplomatic skills to
gain information from his longtime contact.
Taryn, who had recovered his aplomb, fenced back at him, seemingly
enjoying their verbal sparring.
It was a very hard-fought game, but, to his own surprise, Sarek won once
again. Typically, Taryn was not a particularly good sport about his
defeat. The moment endgame was in sight, he signaled his board to topple
his king, then, with barely a civil word of leavetaking, broke the
connection.
After dinner, the two Vulcans retired to the adjoining rooms in their
suite. Sarek set himself to doze until the middle of "night" aboard the
station.
Hours later, the ambassador opened his eyes, then ro
se quietly from his
bed to pull on a dark tunic and trousers, and soft-soled desert boots he
had brought with him for this occasion. With his minuscule Vulcan
tricorder in hand, he seated himself before the Freelan comm link. The
ambassador had been planning for this day for months, and had prepared
programs to cover all of the most probable contingencies.
Sarek's first task was to disarm the alarms on the station's secured
maintenance area. He studied the sleek, horizontal console for only a
moment. "Manual input, please. Standard Federation interface." The
manual control board slid out of a concealed opening, and he swiftly
enabled the external data link. That was the easy part. Now came the
challenging task of causing a calculated "malfunction" in the system
that would camouflage his efforts to access the main data banks.
The Vulcan ambassador quickly set his trioorder to run through the
standard external data conventions, sending handshake messages at
various wavelengths. When the tricorder's screen indicated success, the
Vulcan's lips tightened.
Not Federation standard. Working efficiently, he called up the most
likely communications protocol and linked his tricorder into the Freelan
comm link, then was gratified to see the connection established. The
twenty-five-year-old espionage done by his son aboard a Romulan vessel
would suffice to accomplish his goal.
Confident now of the specifics of this particular computer system, he
downloaded the first of several valit programs and instructed the
low-level operating system to execute. A valit was a small Vulcan
creature that could burrow its way through the hardest soil, capable of
adapting its complex mandibles to numerous functions. Unless the
operating system was massively dissimilar to what Spock had reported,
the valit program would be able to adapt and invade, opening up the
secure portions of the software. And, by returning countless error
messages to the central processors, this first valit program would
effectively disguise his efforts to intrude further.
Although Sarek did not actually have to enter the central maintenance
area to gain further access to the no-longer-secure data, he wanted to
see the Freelan computer with his own eyes. The comm link in his
quarters was encased in a shell that differed little from those found on
any Federation world. In a sense, he had proven nothing so far. The
Freelans could have purchased their comm units and software from the
Romulans. The ambassador had to see the central computer itself, because
he knew that the Romulan cloaking system depended on the massive
processing capabilities of these machines; the Romulans would never
willingly part with this technology to outsiders for mere profit.
Before leaving his quarters, Sarek tapped softly on Soran's door.
Moments later, his aide emerged, also clad in dark clothes, with soft
footwear. "The security alarms?" he whispered.
"Disabled," Sarek replied.
The ambassador had visited the Freelan station many times, and knew
precisely where to go. When they reached the doors that were labeled
MAINTENANCE--NO ADMITRANCE in several languages, including Vulcan, Sarek
stopped, mo-tioning Soran to stay back. He tapped on the entry pad, and
the portals shot apart.
Sarek stepped into the maintenance area, Soran at his side. The young
Vulcan halted suddenly at the sight of a surveillance vid unit, but the
ambassador shook his head reassuringly. The valit was overloading the
condition-recognition software to the point where it would not be
on-line for the time of their visit.
"We must move quickly," Sarek said softly. (Even though there was no one
in the area, the urge for silence remained, illogical though it was.)
"The valit will not delay the security system indefinitely." He led the
way past a transporter room and into the nerve center of the station.
The enormous room contained a gigantic computer system, black metal
without decoration, identical to the one Spock had seen a generation
before. Apparently the Romulans were conservative about changes in a
technology that worked. Sarek nodded grimly. It was as he had
conjectured.
"Ambassador, you must know what you are looking for," Soran said.
"Otherwise you would not have been able to devise a valit program."
"Logical," Sarek said, approvingly, seating himself before the closest
comm link and taking out his tricorder. "You have deduced admirably. If
my theory about the Freelans is correct, then you shall soon see their
true identity for yourself."
"This system bears no resemblance to any in the Federation," Soran said,
watching as Sarek's experienced hands flew over the tricorder controls,
heels of the first valit. It would make all areas of the memory
accessible to external control, and display on the visual monitors
whatever was accessed.
As the two Vulcans watched, random areas of memory began to appear on
the screens. Soran's eyes widened as he made out the characters. "That
script ..." he breathed.
"Romulan!"
"Indeed," Sarek said. "As I expected. But I must capture more than
random kitchen requisitions to justify our suspicions." He held up the
tricorder's photo chip to the screen.
"So the Freelans are Romulans?" Soran said slowly, obviously taken
aback. At Sarek's quick glance, the young Vulcan hastily composed his
features.
"Yes," Sarek said. "They are Romulans. I have suspected it for a long
time, but gaining proof has been difficult.
Ah ... personnel data banks. We are in." Raw information began to flash
across the screen--words in Romulan script, operating-system symbols,
and numbers, all in a jumbled disarray. Hundreds of screens of data,
most of it garbled, appeared in quick succession. Suddenly Sarek leaned
forward and signaled the tricorder to backtrack through the images. A
quick tap froze the output. Intently, he studied the scrambled data.
"What is it?" Soran asked.
"A name--one of the few Freelan names I would recognize.
Do you read Romulan, Soran?"
"No, sir. I will remedy the deficiency as soon as feasible," the young
aide promised. "What does it say?" Sarek indicated a name in flowing
Romulan script.
"Taryn," he said, simply. "This is a list of Romulan officers, along
with their ranks. Taryn is listed, if I am reading this correctly, as a
wing commander." The e lder Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "A high-ranked
Romulan officer indeed." He continued recording data, studying it.
Slowly, he made sense of the scrambled information. He generated a
decoding algorithm in his mind, and mentally overlaid it on the jumble,
seeing order amid chaos.
Minutes later, he was reading it swiftly. Sarek scanned the shipping
data first, noting with grim satisfaction that it, too, proved his
theory. Military vessels from Romulus and Remus made regular voyages to
Freelan, and Freelans voyaged to the Romulan worlds. Romu
lan officers
were logged as being "detailed" to Freelan.
Freelan also had a small fleet of birds-of-prey located in
probe-shielded hangars that were camouflaged by the simple expedient of
placing them beneath massive ice shelves, with roofs impregnated with
scionitc.
The communications logs listed hundreds of subspace messages between the
Romulan worlds and Freelan. Government communiqus listed Freelans on
"missions" to various worlds, particularly Earth--and, nearly always,
the Freelan merchant, diplomat, or scientist was accompanied by an aide
with a Vulcan name.
Sarek automatically memorized those names, knowing however, that further
checks would reveal that they--like Savel--were not Vulcan citizens.
None of the evidence Sarek uncovered was a direct link between the KEHL
activity and the Freelans--or Romulans but the ambassador found the
circumstantial evidence damning.
Without warning, a sudden, familiar sound made him freeze.
Soran heard it, too. "Ambassador--a transporter beam!"
"Attempt to distract the newcomers, while I disengage the valits," Sarek
commanded, his fingers flying. Without a thought he abandoned his hope
of copying further Romulan data banks. If he and Soran were caught here,
spying, the Romulans would be within their rights to summarily execute
them for espionage.
Quickly, he injected the last of the valits, the one designed to