Chapter 165 - Improbable Cause - Part 6
Stardate 48669.73 - September 2, 2371 - 10:50:05
The Defiant was less than an hour out of the Kurill system when the flashing icon of an incoming distress signal lit up the various consoles throughout the bridge.
“Dax?” Sisko prodded, focusing down at the currently combined helm and sensor station that tended to be the Trill's standard duty position.
“It's coming from Omarion Nebula,” Jadzia said after a moment. “Heavily distorted due to the nebula's interference, but I think it's Cardassian.”
“Cardassian?” Sisko repeated with a frown.
Jadzia began rapidly typing on her console. “It looks like an automated ship in distress message, but it feels like there's something off with the encoding.
That was enough to drag Raine in, and she shrank the long range sensor readout and brought up the signal analysis Jadzia was running.
“There's a Tal Shiar signal embedded in an underlayer,” she announced, recognizing both the technique and parts of the encoding from her sector security work the past year. “I'm running decryption algorithms, but it would probably be faster to just get Subcommander T'Rul up here.”
Sisko scratched at his beard, seeming to consider the suggestion before spinning his chair around to face Raine. “Ask the Constable to bring up Mister Garak too, my gut's telling me this may have something to do with last week's attempt on his life. And I want to know as much as possible about what we might be heading into before I order a course change.”
Unsurprisingly, at least to those who spent a significant portion of their lives in space, some of Starfleet's most religiously followed regulations were the ones pertaining to answering distress signals. Oftentimes to the point it involved Starfleet Captains ignoring important orders like, stay out of the neutral zone, or, take the ambassador directly back to the Starbase.
And truthfully Raine couldn't blame them for it since the nightmare of being on the sending end of a distress signal with nobody answering was one that tended to hit most Starfleet officers at one time or another. So everyone on the bridge knew the only way they wouldn't be at least trying to respond to the distress signal was if it was fake or if Sisko was absolutely sure they wouldn't be able to actually pull off investigating it.
It took less than five minutes for the three to arrive at the bridge, T’Rul looking pensive in a way that suggested she had at least had a general idea of what was going on while Garak had his customary guiltless smile on his face.
“Sub-Commander,” Sisko nodded towards the Romulan woman before repeating the action in the general direction of the Cardassian tailor. “Mister Garak. It seems we have a bit of a puzzle on our hands, a Cardassian distress signal with a Tal Shiar signal interlaced into it.”
Garak pursed his lips, glancing over at T’Rul for a moment only to apparently decide he didn’t like what he saw there as his expression darkened just a slight bit. “Commander, would you mind playing the message that accompanied the single?”
Sisko turned a questioning look to Jadzia who had been working on the message alongside Raine the entire time. “Have you managed to get it to a listenable state?”
“Yes,” Jadzia gave a distracted nod. “But it’s a pretty standard automated message.”
“Play it anyways,” Sisko ordered.
Several seconds passed, then a voice with an instantly recognizable Cardassian lilt began speaking.
“Any ships in the vicinity please respond, this is the CDS Danasket, we have suffered catastrophic damage and require immediate assistance…”
The message began repeating after that and Jadzia cut it off after the third time through.
Garak’s face had turned increasingly pensive as the message read out, which was enough for Raine to know there was probably some codephrase in there that Starfleet wasn’t aware of.
“Well?” Sisko prodded, apparently having noticed the same thing the Asari did. “What are we looking at?”
Chewing on the question for a moment, Garak finally seemed to come to some decision as a visible grimace graced the corner of his lips. “A ship that should not exist. Kuvar Danasket was the head of the Obsidian Order sixty three years ago. And I can assure you, Commander, no military vessel would ever be named after him.”
Sisko considered that before focusing on T’Rul. “Anything to add, Sub-Commander?”
“I can confirm Mister Garak’s claim that the Cardassian Military would never name one of their vessels after a former Obsidian Order head.” T’Rul said. “But I would have to see what you believe to be a Tal Shiar signal to know if it is true.”
“Brooks,” Sisko began. “Show her.”
Engaging a quick lockdown of the tactical controls, Raine took a step to the left to make room for T’Rul to work.
Stepping into the emptied space, the Romulan woman spent several seconds looking over the encoding they had been working to decipher before giving a curt nod. “I can confirm this is Tal Shiar.”
“...And?” Raine asked.
“I am not capable of decoding it,” T’Rul confessed, stepping back from the tactical station.
Raine studied her for several seconds, trying to decide if she was being honest or just obfuscating to try and hide the way to decode the signal from Starfleet.
“All right,” she said, finally deciding it didn’t particularly matter to their circumstances.
“What’s the Dominion presence in the area?” Sisko suddenly asked.
Switching back to the long range sensors, Raine spent a minute checking that nothing new had appeared in the few minutes she'd been distracted with trying to decode the Tal Shiar signal.
“Still mostly focused around the Kurill system, and as suspiciously absent around the Nebula as when we first visited. Though of course, given how the Nebula interferes with long range sensors that doesn’t really mean much.”
Sisko nodded to himself before focusing on Jadzia. “Dax, drop us out of warp, engage the cloak, and set a new course for the nebula, maximum warp.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even at the Defiant's maximum warp it had taken them a better part of half a day to arrive at Nebula, so it was no surprise to Raine that the only thing they found was the aftermath of the battle.
Wreckage cluttered the orbit of the Founders former homeworld, unlike what the Asari vaguely remembered however, it was clear it wasn't just Cardassian and Romulan ships that had been lost in the fight, but Dominion ships as well.
The planet itself had not fared much better than the Cardassian and Romulan fleets, its surface glowing molten with the aftereffects of what the Defiant’s sensors were reporting as Romulan plasma torpedo bombardment.
“Survivors?” Sisko asked, snapping them all out of their momentary shock.
Jadzia tapped out several things on her console before shooting the console an annoyed scowl. “I'm not sure, the Nebula and aftereffects of the battle are obscuring things too much to get any clear readings. The most I can tell you is that some of the bigger wrecks look like they might still have pockets of active life support.”
Sisko glanced back over his shoulder at Raine. “And still no signs of any Dominion ships?”
“No,” Raine shook her head, keeping an eye out on her tactical console for anything even approaching an active warp drive. “But I would bet the Cardassians and Romulans thought the same thing before they were attacked.”
“Very likely,” Sisko agreed before clasping his hands together and studying the wreckage on screen.
“Commander,” T'Rul interjected in a cautious tone from the cloak monitoring station at the rear of the bridge. “My government would want us to try and recover one of the ship's black boxes.”
“From the vessels that you know nothing about,” Sisko said, spinning his chair around to stare judgingly at the Romulan woman.
T'Rul sighed. “I know you may find this hard to believe given current evidence to the contrary, but the Star Empire wishes to delay a direct confrontation with the Dominion nearly as much as your own government. Meaning these ships would have fit her had to have been Tal Shiar, or worse.”
Sisko's eyebrows crept upward in surprise. “Worse?”
“The Zhat Vash,” Raine scowled, not having even considered the possibility since they had still been hiding behind the Tal Shiar at this point in the original timeline.
“Yes,” T'Rul gave a grave nod. “Given their known mental instability and suspected remaining resources it is not impossible that the ships out there were part of an attempt by them to provoke a war between our governments and the Dominion.”
“Excuse me for asking this,” Odo interrupted. “But who exactly are the Zhat Vash?”
“A secret Romulan anti-doomsday cult,” Raine volunteered once it became clear T'Rul wasn't going to answer the question herself. “Starfleet only knows bits and pieces of the story due to catching several of their infiltrators, but apparently thousands of years ago they encountered a corrupted telepathic archive of some sorts that drove the Romulans exposed to it insane in a dangerously specific way that involved an extreme fear of artificial intelligence. So they formed an anti-doomsday cult and began infiltrating the Romulan government to push their agenda, eventually creating the Tal Shiar as a mask, and expanding their efforts to destroy artificial intelligence anywhere they found it.”
Glancing over at T'Rul for a moment in case the Romulan woman had any corrections, she continued with her narration. “Over the centuries the Tal Shiar outgrew the Zhat Vash to point those who didn't know about the cult’s greater mission greatly outnumbered those who did, however they somehow managed to keep things secret until Starfleet captured one of their agents who had experienced the telepathic archive and discovered the whole situation via questionably legal methods. At which point that information made its way back to the Romulan government, who was very much not happy to learn about the Zhat Vash's and their alien driven insanity. So they proceeded to purge the Tal Shiar of them and have been hunting their surviving members ever since.”
“Commander,” Garak finally spoke up, gesturing to the empty sensor station that was currently routing its functions to Had six at the helm. “Given the preponderance of Cardassian vessels out there, I may be able to save you at least a little time.”
“Oh?” Sisko turned to the Cardassian and raised a questioning eyebrow.
Garek's eyes briefly flicked to the wreckage still spinning on screen.“If those were Obsidian Order ships, it's likely any escape pods they carried would have been engineered for stealth operations. In which case I may know a few ways to speed up your ship's detection of them.”
“Any help on that front would be appreciated,” Jadzia admitted.
“Very well,” Sisko gave a nod of permission before turning to Odd. “But Constable, watch him.”
“Of course,” Odo, inclined his head slight, following Garak over to the sensor station.
Turning back to T'Rul, Sisko drummed his fingers on his knee a few times before speaking. “What would be the fastest way to retrieve a black box from one of your ships?”
T'Rul seemed to fight with herself for several seconds before letting out a sigh of acquiescence. “Unless you believe you can calibrate your transporter to perfectly match that of a Romulan vessel, the only way to do so and have the data remain intact is by manually retrieving it. Which,” her eyes briefly flicked over to Raine, “no offense to your people, will also likely require my presence if we want any chance of removing the device with the data intact.”
“Brooks,” Sisko began. “I assume you can handle that?”
“So long as Jadzia can find us a good target,” Raine nodded before turning to T'Rul. “I assume you’re qualified on the standard Starfleet EV suits?”
“Unfortunately,” T'Rul grimaced, a sure enough sign of her experience with the white monstrosities. “But we will need to retrieve a Romulan EV suit for me to wear from the wreckage as it will have the necessary tools and authentication programs needed to bypass the various security precautions no doubt in place.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Jadzia muttered under her breath as she redirected her search.
“Take one of the shuttles,” Sisko instructed as Raine began to turn to the door. “Something about how empty things are isn’t sitting right with me, and I don’t want to chance decloaking the Defiant if I can help it.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Raine agreed. “Do I have authorization for full tactical kit deployment?”
It would be the difference between going over in her armor or one of the more standard EV suits, and given how cumbersome the standard suits could be she would much prefer the former over the latter.
“For your team,” Sisko gave a permissive nod.
“Got it,” Raine agreed before turning to T’Rul. “Be ready in the shuttle bay as soon as you clear whatever suit Jadzia finds for use.”
“Of course,” T’Rul nodded.
“Let’s just hope the Jem’Hadar aren’t a fan of the double tap,” Raine muttered under her breath as she headed off the bridge. Already mentally going through the list of available security personnel to figure out which two would be joining them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author’s Notes: Next chapter, Raine, T’Rul, and two eager young security officers on board a “derelict” Tal Shiar ship. What could possibly go wrong? :D