19
“Approaching Uesta,” announced Lieutenant Mosweu.
“On-screen,” Worf said, and the main viewscreen showed a small and pearl-colored world with massive ice caps. A fragile band of blue and brown wrapped around the equator: the only livable portion of the planet.
Ensign Naysmith reported from the security station. “The ship has landed in the center of the western ice field. No outposts have been established there.”
Troi stared at the icy pearl on the viewscreen. “I don’t think it’s out of the range of possibility a criminal element on Uesta has taken refuge out there.”
“Agreed.” Worf stood up. “Ensign Naysmith, you and Commander Troi will join me on the away team. Mister La Forge, you have the conn.”
Troi frowned. “Worf, you are currently in command of the ship. Surely Lieutenant La Forge—”
“Noted,” Worf said. “But I would feel more comfortable leading this mission myself, given my role as security officer.”
Troi expected him to say as much. She stood up, heart beating quickly, and followed Worf and Naysmith down to the transporter room. Worf was speaking into his combadge, requesting cold-weather gear be replicated immediately. Two days ago, Troi had been planning to spend three days on Betazed: a warm, lush, and temperate world. Beaming down to a frozen planet had not been in her plans.
The life of a Starfleet officer, she thought wryly.
They arrived at the transporter room and suited up. Cold-weather gear was waiting for them. The pants were bibbed, adding extra warmth to the core. The coats fit snugly around their forms and fell to their knees. Troi pulled up the hood, tucking her hair inside, and then slipped on the heat mask: a shield that would protect her lungs from the icy air planetside.
“Ready?” Worf asked the team. They stepped onto the transporter platform.
The commander didn’t want to think about the ramifications; if Aviana Virox was in the ship, it would reverberate across Betazed.
“Energize,” Worf ordered.
“The ship is this way!” Ensign Naysmith’s voice came in through the heat mask, by way of their combadges. Snow swirled around them and was evaporated into mist when it hit their masks. Worf and Naysmith were two dark smudges on the white backdrop, and Troi pushed forward across the hard-packed snow, her gear struggling to beat back the cold.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long before she saw a structure rising out of the smear of snow. It was some kind of thick, dark metal, with a jagged, uneven roof, like black ice jutting up out of the tundra. Naysmith held up his tricorder.
“Inside that building!” he said.
Worf stalked forward, phaser drawn. Troi followed, pushing through her own discomfort to determine if she could sense someone inside. At first, there was nothing, just a dark, cavernous emptiness. Then—
A thread of terror. Despair.
“Someone’s inside,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s our thief.”
“Are you sure?” Worf looked over at her.
“I can sense fear. Not just fear—” She plunged forward, calling out over her shoulder, “Hopelessness!”
“Understood. Ensign, how do we get in that building?”
“Working on it.” Naysmith trudged up to the structure, holding his tricorder. Troi was still reaching out. The emotions she had registered were growing stronger, pulsing out in frantic, panicked waves. She pressed one gloved hand against the building, ice melting away from the heat of her glove and dripping down to the building’s side only to freeze in a series of teardrops.
“I found something,” Naysmith reported. “It looks like the door is iced over. We need to melt it.”
Worf checked the setting on his phaser and then directed it at the door. Steam billowed out as the ice evaporated, landing on the hood of his coat in dark spots of condensation. Naysmith joined in. When the ice was clear, Troi was able to see that the door was made of the same material as the building. Ferengi was etched across the top of the door, and Naysmith’s tricorder provided the translation: Property of the Kotor Brothers.
Kotor. Ferengi gangsters—they’d been active over a century ago. Now they were a popular subject for holodeck programs where one could either play the Kotor brothers or the Starfleet officers who took them down.
Naysmith pressed his hands up against the door. “This door is reading as unlocked.”
Abruptly, the door jerked sideways, letting out a loud, metallic groan, then shuddered to a stop when it was only halfway open. The terror Troi had felt poured out—along with a wave of heat.
“Whoever is in there is terrified,” she said to Worf.
The Klingon’s features were blurred by melted snow smearing across his heat shield. “We need to be cautious.”
Troi said, “Let me go first.”
“No.”
“Worf.” She put her hands on his upper arms and looked straight at him. “Trust me. I’m not sensing any threat.”
Worf nodded in agreement, and Troi knew that was the best she was going to get. She squeezed through the half-open door, stepping into a massive, empty space. It was a warehouse of some sort, with old ship parts and packing crates sitting in haphazard piles. She deactivated her heat mask and pushed back the hood of her coat. The climate control was welcome after being outside.
“Hello!” she called out. “We’re here to help you!”
The panic shifted, turned to a kind of hysterical giddiness. Can you hear me? The voice rang in Troi’s head. You’re Betazoid. Please, I need help!
“Aviana Virox?” Troi whispered, then sent it out with her thoughts.
Yes! I am Aviana Virox, daughter of the Third House of Betazed and Keeper of the Enshrined Disk of Xiomara. I have been kidnapped!
Footsteps sounded behind Troi, filling the space up with echoes. She knew it was Worf and Naysmith, both with their phasers drawn.
“Put those away,” she said. “It’s Aviana Virox. She says she’s been kidnapped.”
Naysmith put his phaser away and activated his tricorder. “No life signs,” he said. “Just the ship.”
“She’s here,” Troi said. “I can hear her.”
Help me! I’m trapped in my ship! That dreadful Romulan commandeered it. She has the treasures! She used my likeness to take the treasures!
“What’s wrong?” Worf moved closer, alert.
“We need to find her,” Troi said. “She’s telling me that a Romulan is behind the robbery. We need to get to the ship.”
“Follow me.”
The Klingon lieutenant took off across the echoing warehouse. Naysmith and Troi followed. Starship parts towered around them like sleeping giants, and the air had a musty quality, as if the space had not been touched in decades.
“There.” Worf pointed. An old-fashioned Betazoid ship sat out in the open, the floor around it wet with melted snow. The hatchway was open, the stairs extending from it.
Troi started toward the ship, but Worf put his hand on her shoulder. “I will go first,” he said.
Troi understood his concern. She shouldn’t be scrambling aboard a ship that had likely been used for the heist of the century. “Yes, sir.”
I can hear noises outside! Is that you? Who are you?
Commander Deanna Troi of the Starship Enterprise, Troi thought. Lieutenant Worf is coming aboard now.
“Madame Virox!” Worf called out from inside the ship. “I’m a Starfleet officer. We are here to help you.”
Starfleet!
Troi stepped into the ship. As with most traditional Betazoid ships, it was exquisitely decorated. Filigreed details along the bulkheads, brocaded flight seats, and tapestried carpet covered the decks.
Aviana? We are aboard your ship. Where—
That Romulan locked me up in the storage facility.
Banging echoed through the ship.
Can you hear that?
Troi sent along a wave of affirmation as she and Worf ducked deeper into the ship, following the banging. In the rear, the curtains had been ripped down, and a bar was jammed into the handle of a storage door. Virox banged against it, making the bar rattle.
“We’re here.” Worf yanked out the bar and dropped it to the deck with a clatter. The door immediately sprang open and Aviana Virox spilled out, landing in Worf’s arms. She gazed up at him, blush pinkening her cheeks.
“Are you injured?” Worf said.
“No.” Aviana spoke barely above a whisper. She pulled away, shaking out her dress, a simple traveling frock. Troi vaguely recalled seeing a holo of her Betazoid grandmother in one. “Thank you,” she added to Worf, and gave him a curtsy. She looked exactly as she had in the memories Loriana had shared with Troi: older, with curly silver hair and a handsome, aristocratic face.
“Aviana,” Troi said. “We would like to beam you aboard the Enterprise. Is that acceptable to you?”
Yes, please get me out of this awful place.
Twenty minutes later, Troi and Worf sat with Aviana Virox in the Enterprise’s briefing room. She had replicated a new dress. It’s not proper to be seen in a traveling frock in mixed company, she informed Troi. She sipped hot chocolate, her long fingers squeezing the mug as if she were afraid to let it go.
“Aviana,” Troi said. “We need to speak audibly.” She gestured at Worf.
“Yes,” Virox whispered. “Please forgive my voice. I don’t use it much.”
“That is perfectly fine.” Worf folded his hands in front of him and nodded at Troi to get started.
“Tell us what happened,” Troi said. “Tell us about the Romulan.”
“She tricked me,” Virox whispered hoarsely. “She has a device—it allows her to look like anyone she wants. She came to my estate as Sildar Syn.” I’ve known Sildar for years! I would know his face anywhere. And yet—
“Out loud, please,” Troi said, patting Virox’s hand.
“Oh, of course, forgive me.” Virox set down her chocolate and pressed her hands into the table. “Posing as Syn, she told me to send my attendants along earlier, that he needed them for… I can’t even remember what.” Virox shook her head. “She wanted me in my ship alone, and I fell for it! I absolutely fell—”
“Aviana,” Troi said, “this is not your fault. But we need your help so that we can recover the stolen treasures. Where is the Romulan now?”
“I don’t know. She locked me in my ship and left me on that terrible planet. She took Xiomara’s treasures with her.” Virox’s eyes gleamed. “To see them in the hands of a Romulan—”
Worf tapped his combadge. “Worf to La Forge. Scan Uesta for any Romulan presence.”
“Oh, she’s not on the planet.” Virox scowled. “She was taking the treasures elsewhere. We must find her before she does something horrible to them.”
“We will,” Troi said. “Do you have any sense of where she might be going?”
Aviana closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “I do remember her grumbling about having to pass through a checkpoint near Creis. Does that help?”
Creis. It was a small moon in the Tasch system, which wasn’t far.
“It helps immensely. What else can you tell us?”
“She left me in that warehouse while she was on Betazed. She took the Enshrined Disk. I thought that was horrible enough, but when she came back, she had all three.”
Her eyes glimmered gently with tears, but the despair and anguish welling out of her was overpowering. Unlike her attendants, she made no attempt to block her emotions.
“We will need to inform Captain Picard and the Betazed authorities about the Romulan.” Worf headed for the bridge.
Troi drew Virox into an embrace. “Worf, I’m going to see if I can help her relax.”
You have to find them. As she sent words, Virox also sent images: the Romulan wrenching the Enshrined Disk out of its carrying case while Virox watched, hands bound by an energy cord. The Romulan was telling her “It’s nothing personal.” She loaded the other two treasures into new carrying cases, and secured all three.
A Romulan. Virox’s telepathic skills were refined enough, practiced enough, that Troi could see the Romulan’s face clearly. She was older than Virox, and she wore her long, sleek hair pulled back in a ropy braid.
“We’re going to find her,” Troi said, helping the House leader to her feet. “We’re going to find all of the treasures.”