Michael A. Martin's solo short fiction has appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several
Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm and numerous Star Trek novels and eBooks, including the
USA Today bestseller
Titan: Book One: Taking Wing; Titan: Book Two: The Red King; the Sy Fy Genre Award-winning
Star Trek: Worlds of Deep Space 9 Book Two: Trill -- Unjoined; Star Trek: The Lost Era 2298 -- The Sundered; Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Mission: Gamma: Vol. Three: Cathedral; Star Trek: The Next Generation: Section 31 -- Rogue; Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers #30 and #31 ("Ishtar Rising" Books 1 and 2); stories in the
Prophecy and Change, Tales of the Dominion War, and
Tales from the Captain's Table anthologies; and three novels based on the
Roswell television series. His most recent novels include
Enterprise: The Romulan War and
Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many.His work has also been published by Atlas Editions (in their Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Star Trek Monthly, Dreamwatch, Grolier Books, Visible Ink Press, The Oregonian, and Gareth Stevens, Inc., for whom he has penned several World Almanac Library of the States nonfiction books for young readers. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their two sons in Portland, Oregon.
Andy Mangels is the USA Today bestselling author and coauthor of over a dozen novels -- including Star Trek and Roswell books -- all cowritten with Michael A. Martin. Flying solo, he is the bestselling author of several nonfiction books, including Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters and Animation on DVD: The Ultimate Guide, as well as a significant number of entries for The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes as well as for its companion volume, The Supervillain Book.
In addition to cowriting several more upcoming novels and contributing to anthologies, Andy has produced, directed, and scripted a series of sixteen half-hour DVD documentaries for BCI Eclipse, for inclusion in the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe DVD box sets.
Andy has written hundreds of articles for entertainment and lifestyle magazines and newspapers in the United States, England, and Italy. He has also written licensed material based on properties from numerous film studios and Microsoft, and his two decades of comic book work has been published by DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse, Image, Innovation, and many others. He was the editor of the award-winning Gay Comics anthology for eight years.
Andy is a national award-winning activist in the Gay community, and has raised thousands of dollars for charities over the years. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his long-term partner, Don Hood, their dog, Bela, and their chosen son, Paul Smalley. Visit his website at www.andymangels.com.
Chapter One: Romulus, Stardate 56828.8 "This must be your first visit to Ki Baratan," said the woman who stood behind the operative.
So much for hiding in plain sight, the operative thought, quietly abandoning his hope that she would pay him as little heed as had the throngs of civilians and military officers he'd already passed along the city's central eyhon. He turned and regarded her, averting his gaze momentarily from the graceful, blood-green dome of the Romulan Senate building. The ancient structure gleamed behind him in the morning sun, reflecting an aquamarine glint from the placid Apnex Sea that lay just beyond it.
"As a matter of fact, this is my first visit," the operative said. He smiled broadly, confident that the woman wouldn't sense how awkward this particular mannerism felt to him. "Before today, I had seen the greatness of Dartha only in my grandfather's holos."
As she studied him, he noted that she was old and gray. Her clothing was drab and shapeless, her lined countenance stern, evidently forged by upwards of two centuries of hard life circumstances. He watched impassively as she ran her narrowed, suspicious gaze over his somewhat threadbare traveling cassock.
"Dartha?" the woman said, still scrutinizing him. "Nobody has referred to the Empire's capital by that name since Neral came to power."
The operative silently cursed himself even as he concealed his frustration beneath a carefully cultivated mask of impassivity. Though his lapse was an understandable one -- roughly akin, he thought, to confusing Earth's nineteenth-century Constantinople with twentieth-century Istanbul -- he upbraided himself for it nonetheless.
"Forgive me, 'lai," he said, using the traditional rustic form of address intended to show respect to an elder female. "I arrived just today, from Leinarrh. In the Rarathik District."
An indulgent, understanding smile tugged at her lips. "Just what I thought. I took you for a hveinn right away. A farmer who's never left the waith before."
The operative forced his own smile to broaden, reassured that she found his rural Rarathik dialect convincing. He maintained his caution, however; like him, this apparently harmless old woman might not be at all what she appeared to be. "At your service, 'lai. You may call me Rukath."
She nodded significantly yet discreetly toward the dome -- and the disruptor-carrying guards that walked among the green, ruatinite-inlaid minarets that surrounded it. "Then allow me to give you some friendly advice, Rukath of Leinarrh. Continue gawking so about the Hall of State, and I might have to call you 'dead.' Or perhaps worse."
The operative allowed his smile to collapse, which actually came as a relief. He feigned innocent fear, per his extensive intelligence and tactical training. "Do you really think those uhlans over there would actually shoot me? Just for looking?"
"Just pray that the cold fingers of Erebus find you too unimportant to snatch away into the underworld," she said with a pitying shake of the head. "Daold klhu."
Tourists, the operative silently translated the unfamiliar Romulan term as the old woman turned and walked away. "Jolan'tru, 'lai," he said to her retreating back.
He turned back toward the Senate Dome and watched as the guards made their rounds. He counted six at the moment, marching in pairs, their arrogant, disciplined gazes focused straight ahead. The old woman's warning notwithstanding, he might as well have been invisible to them.
But it's best not to become complacent, he thought, checking the chrono built into the disguised subspace pulse transmitter he wore on his wrist. Time was growing short. Since his surreptitious arrival on Romulus the previous day, he had taken in sights very few of his people had ever seen.
He'd just paid what might well turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Romulan capital of Ki Baratan. Now the time had come to venture beneath it.
The operative deliberately set aside unpleasant thoughts of the underworld of ancient Romulan mythology. Those old stories hadn't sufficiently described the noisome smells that were wafting up around him from the figurative -- and literal -- bowels of Ki Baratan. Erebus, indeed.
Guided through the stygian gloom by his wrist light, the operative was relieved to note that the venerable maze of aekhhwi'rhoi -- the stone-lined sewer tunnels that ran below Ki Baratan -- corresponded precisely to the maps the defector M'ret had provided to Starfleet Intelligence. Carefully stepping over and past countless scuttling, multilegged, sewer-dwelling nhaidh, he made his way to the appointed place. Once there, he pulled hard at a rust-covered, meter-wide wheel, laboriously opening up a narrow access hatchway that looked to be older than Surak and T'Karik combined. The corroded steel aperture groaned in protest, moving only fractionally as the muscles in his back strained. After perhaps a minute of hard coaxing, the wheel gave way and the hatch opened with a clang that reverberated loudly throughout the catacombs.
Releasing the wheel, he pulled a small disruptor pistol from beneath his cassock, then squeezed through the narrow opening without making any further pretense of stealth; by now whoever else might be down here, whether friend or foe, was surely aware of his presence.
He passed into the darkened chamber beyond the hatch, where air that reeked of stagnation, moldy old bones, and damp earth assailed his nostrils. Stepping forward, he heard a quiet yet stern male voice.
"Halt! Drop your weapon." Something cool and unyielding pressed forcefully into the small of his back.
The operative released his grip on the weapon, allowing it to clatter to the rough stone floor. A bright light suddenly shone before him, momentarily triggering his nictitating inner eyelids. He caught a glimpse of several humanoid silhouettes standing before him, several meters farther inside the cavern's depths.
"State your name," said the voice behind him. It sounded young, almost adolescent. Or perhaps merely frightened? "And state your business here."
The operative knew that this was the moment of truth, and very possibly the last moment of his life. He faced that prospect with a Vulcan's ingrained equanimity.
"While on Romulus, I am known as Rukath."
"Of Leinarrh, in far-off Rarathik," someone else said, in a stern female voice. "By way of Starfleet Intelligence. Yes, we knew you were coming."
The operative nodded. "Then you already know my business here. I expected no less."
He felt the weapon at his back quiver slightly, and he calculated his odds of disarming the man behind him. They weren't at all good. Nevertheless, the time had come to end the standoff, regardless of the outcome.
"I also bring greetings from Federation starship Alliance. Captain Saavik sends her best regards to the movement. And to the ambassador, of course."
As the operative had hoped, the mention of the ambassador's wife prompted one of the silhouettes before him to detach itself from the others and step forward. The tall, lean form spoke in a graveled yet resonant voice that he recognized instantly, even though more than eight decades had passed since he had last heard it.
"Lower your weapon, D'Tan. Rukath is among friends."
"But how can we be certain this Rukath is a friend? If that's even his name."
The figure stepped forward another several paces, and waved an arm in what was obviously a prearranged signal. In response, the light levels diminished, allowing the operative to see the approaching man's face clearly, as well as the coterie of a half-dozen armed Romulan civilians, an even mix of men and women, who stood vigilantly all around him.
Ambassador Spock.
The tall, conspicuously unarmed figure came to a stop only a meter away, his hands folded in front of his simple hooded pilgrim's robe as he studied the operative's face. The operative recalled his only previous meeting with the ambassador, whose saturnine visage was umistakable despite the addition of a great many new lines and wrinkles. He wondered if Spock remembered him as well, after the passage of so many years. Perhaps the minor surgical alterations that had been wrought on his facial structure obscured his identity.
"Your vigilance is an asset to us, D'Tan," Spock said to the young man with the weapon. "But as Surak teaches us, there can be no progress without risk."
That evidently got through to the armed man, who withdrew his weapon and backed away. The operative spared a quick glance over his shoulder, nodding toward Spock's youthful bodyguard in a manner that he hoped would be taken as nonthreatening and reassuring. He noted the other man's response: a hard scowl and a still-unholstered disruptor.
The operative fixed his gaze once again upon Spock, a man who had achieved great notoriety back on Vulcan -- as well as throughout the Federation and beyond -- more than a century earlier. How strange, he thought, that one who never even achieved Kolinahr now represents all of Vulcan here in this forbidding place -- and attempts to bring such radical change to both Vulcan and Romulus. He wondered if Spock would have taken on such a task had he attained the pinnacle of logic that the Kolinahr disciplines represented.
Would I have been so foolish to have followed him here had Kolinahr not eluded me also?
"Walk with me, please, Rukath," Spock said, then abruptly turned to stride more deeply into the rough-hewn cavern that stretched beyond the sewer hatch. The operative immediately fell into step beside the ambassador. He heard the crunch of gravel behind him, as Spock's followers tailed the pair at a respectful distance. If I really were the Tal Shiar or military intelligence infiltrator these people fear that I am, this mission would surely be a suicide run.
"You must forgive D'Tan," Spock said.
"There is nothing to forgive,...
