Oblivion - Michael Jan Friedman [5]
Wu was sitting behind Picard’s sleek black desk as Ben Zoma entered. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.
He plunked himself down in the chair opposite Picard’s. “Apparently not.”
The second officer gestured to indicate the captain’s desktop computer. “I was going over some more of those reports we received on the Ubarrak.”
Ben Zoma chuckled drily. “Fascinating, aren’t they?”
“Unquestionably,” said Wu. “It’s difficult to believe they used to eat their young.”
The first officer grimaced. If he’d had trouble sleeping before, that image wasn’t going to improve matters.
“I’ve heard,” he said, “that they only practiced that sort of behavior during famines.”
“Well,” Wu responded without missing a beat, “I guess that makes all the difference.”
Ben Zoma smiled to himself. “So what else have you learned about the Ubarrak?”
The second officer shrugged. “That they’re crafty, belligerent, and capable of holding their breath for several minutes at a time. And that they despise the Federation and the Cardassian Union in equal measure.”
“That’s because we’re in their way,” said Ben Zoma. “They’d like to annex the entire sector.”
“So would the Cardassians,” Wu pointed out. “But neither of them can become King of the Hill as long as there’s a balance of power here.”
She was right, of course. As long as there were three political entities in this part of space, it would be hard for any one of them to grab any more territory.
And the Federation would be content if it stayed that way. However, its Starfleet strategists were of the belief that the Ubarrak were about to break the stalemate.
If the Cardassians didn’t beat them to it.
Like the Ubarrak, the Cardassians were clever adversaries. But that was where the similarity between them ended.
The Cardassians were cold and aloof, a species that preferred its own company to that of others. Unlike the Ubarrak’s entry into the sector, the Cardassians’ had been a slow and subtle one—the result of political alliances and trade agreements rather than conquests.
But it was a presence nonetheless. And there was no question at Starfleet Command that the Cardassians could and would strike militarily, if they believed the situation called for it.
“Which,” the first officer said, “is why the captain’s mission is so important to us.”
The key to it was a wealthy, high-strung Zartani named Nuadra Demmix. A few years earlier, Demmix’s wife and two young daughters were visiting a Zartani colony when it was set upon by an Ubarrak assault force.
According to the colonists’ accounts, they didn’t even put up a fight. In a matter of minutes, their world became a possession of the Ubarrak Primacy—but not before the assault force took the lives of twenty-four innocent Zartani, Demmix’s wife and children among them.
Demmix was overwhelmed by a black tide of grief. As sometimes happens with members of his species in stressful situations, his metabolism shut down—so much so that he had to be placed on life-support devices.
It seemed like only a matter of time before he succumbed. But somehow, he hung on. And contrary to the expectations of his physicians, he recovered.
As Demmix insisted later, it was for only one reason that he came back from the dead: He wanted to pay the Ubarrak back for what they had done to him.
Before long, he came up with a way to do that. He would use his considerable fortune to find out more about the Ubarrak. After several months of paying off official after official, he wound up with key information on a new sort of tactical system being installed in the Ubarrak’s warships.
By sharing that information with the Federation, Demmix would place the Ubarrak at a severe tactical disadvantage—one they wouldn’t even know about until it was too late. It wouldn’t bring back Demmix’s family, but it would be a sweet revenge.
There was just one problem. The Ubarrak were reported to have designs on the Zartani homeworld, and it was their practice to hire spies in preparation for any major invasion.
With