Chapter 15: Sub Rosa II
2409
23:34 Hours
The success of the plan now rests entirely on Aurelia’s own conviction.
After successfully placing the silver-box thalaron generators around the ship, she returns to Galan’s quarters to make her final preparations. The dead riov's command codes and biometrics make everything easier than it should have been: slaving the detonation protocols to her tablet and quietly changing out the command authorizations to her own voiceprint and codes to make it look like Galan himself had done the transfer.
She checks her tablet; Kirina has indeed, as promised, sent full biometric scans for her Tal Shiar “patient.” Aurelia dives into the code surrounding the security feeds for her first entrance into Galan’s quarters, changing her visual and biometric records to better reflect those belonging to Major K’haeth. She grabs one of Galan’s holomatrices, loads the program, drops it in an empty silver thalaron-generator-case, locks the door behind her and heads to the transporter room.
Once there, she calls her team. Shiarreal, Salara, Nniol, Hleidra. They are faces she trusted, faces she’d been with for years, faces that changed on Jouret as she watched them casually murder the innocent. So she tells them her story, the one she’ll spring on the bridge officers in just a few minutes. She shows them the holoprojector in the silver box. She informs them that there is no-one to be trusted but their small cadre, and that they are to transport to the smaller vessels on Galan’s command and wait for more instructions. She tells them that they are patriots.
She gives them each a small silver thalaron generator. She says it is a holoprojector that will open only on her command.
They trust her, of course, and go. She has never led them astray.
00:00 Hours
Aurelia waits in the transporter room until she feels the familiar disorientation of the ship falling out of warp. She straightens her uniform, fixes her hair and lets her feet carry her to the bridge of their own volition. She passes the bridge guards with the disruptor and dathe’anofv-sen carefully concealed, and takes an as-yet-unnoticed place at the back of the bridge. The command codes quietly accept her presence.
The bridge is complete, uncontrolled chaos, and Aurelia is thrilled to see the main viewscreen showing the careful, tight line of alien vessels breaking out of formation, spinning and drifting, one by one going dark, one by one losing communications. The aliens are distracted. The first officer – a man chosen more for his loyalty to the Tal Shiar than his command ability – has no idea what is happening, and is screaming his lungs out at the sensors officer, who is calling fruitlessly for Commander Galan to come to the bridge.
“Void,” breathes the sensor officer, “I’m reading Borg signatures on the allied vessels!”
The bridge unravels as the officers attempt to make confirmation. The first officer turns on the weapons centurion; the other officers bend over their consoles, unwilling to risk the wrath of the first officer. It is her chance. Aurelia tears herself away from the wall, raises her gun, and fires it point-blank at the first officer’s head. He topples over and smokes on the floor, no longer breathing.
The bridge goes deathly silent. It is a testament to how much the man is liked that the guards do not move.
Time for the show.
Aurelia draws out the generator box with the holomatrix inside and places it on the first officer’s console. It flares into life, and the bridge officers watch in growing horror: the K’haeth-figure stalks into Galan’s office, raises his disruptor, and then applies the Tal Shiar device to the commander’s forehead. Only Aurelia recognizes her own body movements, her hands, her face where K’haeth’s now live.
It’s a stretch. I have to sell it.
“I found him,” Aurelia says, allowing her voice to break. “He has killed our beloved commander in cold blood and betrayed us all. The first officer was his creature; you knew that. All Tal Shiar on the ship are his! We must take back our vessel or we will all die. Look! Look at the viewscreen! I am trying to save you. I am riov now. I know what is coming and I can save you.”
Her voice is iron. She lifts her finger, her voice commanding – no time to stop now, this is committal, she has to keep on going. The pickups have been an open secret for months, and Jouret had been confirmation. Everyone knew what was going on belowdecks, now. Everyone laughed. “The Borg signatures. He beamed over the traitors to the alien vessels to see how fast they would assimilate them. And when they are done with them, they will come for us.”
The officer at conn looks nervous. “I’ll get the third officer.”
“No!” Aurelia snarls. “That lazy hlai! He is not even here and he was summoned five minutes ago! Does it look like we have the time to wait for him? This was their plan all along! To take the traitors and use them thus! The Irix will be the first Khnial-class destroyer, and none of us will be witnesses! The Tal Shiar care for nothing but themselves! They wish us all as part of their experiment, to find out just how long it takes for a warbird to be assimilated – and I will not allow this to happen! I am riov now! Commander Galan trusted me, he gave me the codes before he died; check them yourselves and you will find me authorized!”
She looks around, holding the disruptor, narrowing her eyes. Each of the bridge officers is career military. Each of them knows her as a competent tactician. Each of them has been nursing the fear K’haeth instilled until it turned into into anger and paranoia; each of them had thinks they would be replaced just as the department heads had been. And so it really does not matter if they all do not believe her. All she needs is one stone to roll down the hill, and she would have her avalanche.
The communications officer clears his throat. “Riov,” he says, “We have a transmission from the Elachi cruiser.”
Riov. She holds the disruptor, slowly sitting in the commander’s chair, as if she is afraid it would burst into flames. She can hardly breathe. I thought I would be dead by now. “Put it on speakers.”
“Ae, riov,” he responds.
The voice they all hear is doubled, tripled – it is the voice of two, of thousands. Romulan voices, the Jouret survivors. No, not them – the voice of the Collective was impossible to fake, impossible to fool, recognizable from the first instant to any spacefaring sentient.
I am going to hear this every night for the rest of my life. She swallowed, her throat dry as bone.
“We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. Your culture will adapt to --”
The bridge officers look back to their consoles, immediately working to counter the alien ships, which have now begun to sputter back into life. Aurelia can already see the blocky, snaking green-and-black Collective build seeping from the sleek blue sides of the alien vessels. She hits the comm-toggle on the arm of the chair. “Acting Commander t’Veras to rihannsu fleet, command authorization hwi mnei rhi ulhei mosaram. The alien vessels that are our escorts have been infested with experimental Borg drones by the traitor Tal Shiar agent K’haeth. If allowed to escape, the Borg drones will board our ships, assimilate our crews, and bring chaos to the Empire. We cannot allow that to happen. Prepare to engage, attack pattern nei’rrh-hwi.”
She holds her breath as the other ships match the command codes to those she changed in the Irix database in order to ratify her orders, and hits the comm toggle again.
“Araram, Clania, Shalyar. Flank the lead alien cruiser; destroy it. Irix, Incepteris, the frigates and corvettes. Nei’rrh-hwi, now!”
The weapons officer yelps. “Void! They’re attacking each other!”
Aurelia takes a breath. “The aliens are trying to keep their vessels intact! We all know how quickly a ship can fall, no matter how powerful its crew! Keep firing! We will not fail the Empire here!”
Irix turns, weapons alight, on the alien ships. At first, the ships fight back, but as the Jouret survivors advance with one mind through the alien halls, turning the crews with Kirina’s experimental nanites, searching for the Collective that was so far away, they begin to sputter and fail; in turn, the Romulan weapons-fire finds easy purchase, tearing down the alien shields and punching holes in the hull. Fires erupt into vacuum and fell back just as quickly.
When it is over, Irix drifts, surrounded by the burning husks of the dead alien vessels. Debris floats across the viewscreen, and Aurelia finally allows herself to breathe.
“All targets destroyed,” says the weapons officer. “All Borg signatures gone.”
The third officer chooses this moment to show up. His eyes are blood-green and he is clearly hungover, the result of the drugged ale Aurelia gave him earlier. She simply bows to him and rises from the commander’s chair.
“I cede the bridge and the codes to you, rekkhai,” she says, respectfully. “I am but a humble servant of the Empire… one who has done her duty and who now will return to her place.”
The bridge, once again, is as silent as the grave.
“Get off my bridge,” the third officer snarls, seeing the hulks of the burning ships outside. “Before I brig you.”
It won’t be long now.
From the bridge, Aurelia runs pell-mell down to the shuttlebay, lost between small gaggles of engineering officers and enlisted techs making repairs, moving to stations, shouting, hollering; runs past flickering hull-breach forcefields covering the dizzying, gaping maw of space; past spitting, ruptured plasma conduits; past the Project checkpoint and the lounge and the barracks and everything that makes her what she is.
The shuttle door is open. Kirina is waiting for her. Seeing the woman’s head bowed while making final preparations for takeoff, it finally occurs to her how easily she could have been betrayed and used; how easily Kirina could have lifted off without her, sailed off to Artaleirh, left her there to die.
She feels something she has never experienced before; she is breathless with it, shaking, a balled-up mess of disbelief knotting up in her chest.
I knew she was a friend, but this… is this what true alliance feels like?
No time to think about it now. She runs into the shuttle. “It’s done. Go.”