Precipice

The transparent doors ahead of him were coated with black soot and dust, rendering them opaque. He wedged his fingers between the two door panels. With a pained grunt he forced them apart. They screeched and scraped in their tracks.

He opened the doors wide enough to squeeze his broad chest through. As he pushed his way into the lab, he saw a shadowy humanoid figure at its center.

The intruder’s build looked masculine to Jackson’s eyes. He was dressed in black and wore a balaclava-style hood over his head. His eyes were hidden by wraparound black glasses.

Somehow the man had blasted through the protective shielding in the middle of the lab. He was standing in the experiment chamber, next to the testing platform for the Mirdonyae Artifact—and holding the skull-sized, twelve-sided crystal in one hand while giving Jackson a jaunty wave farewell with the other.

As Jackson belatedly lifted his phaser to fire, the intruder ducked out of sight behind the bank of consoles that surrounded the experiment chamber.

Jackson freed himself from the door and ran into the lab, toward the bank of consoles. When he reached them and looked into the area beyond, he saw that a panel had been pulled from the floor, exposing a half-height sublevel filled with machinery, wiring, circuits, and power conduits.

He pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open. It responded with a dysfunctional-sounding “no signal” chirp, and he remembered with frustration that the interior of the Vault was hardened against signal traffic. Only hard-line communications could go in or out of the lab.

Dammit,he raged, tucking his communicator back into place on his hip. He hurdled over the consoles and through the breach in the test area’s curtain of transparent aluminum. Scrambling through the gap in the floor, he dropped in a crouch to the cramped sublevel.

The security chief spun in fast ninety-degree turns, searching the black maze of machinery and tubing for the escaping thief. All he saw was darkness.

Take the path of least resistance,he told himself. If you were trying to make an escape, you’d want to move fast.

He found the direction that had the fewest obstructions and started moving. He shuffled forward, ducking under low-hanging components and occasionally crawling on his belly.

Then he caught a brief flash of dim light and motion directly ahead of him. He quickened his pace. Moments later he clambered out a small maintenance hatch into what he realized was the turbolift shaft disabled by the plasma fire. A few meters below him was a stalled lift car. On top of it, something was smoldering and giving off acrid smoke.

Jackson climbed down the shaft’s emergency ladder. He stepped off the ladder onto the lift car and stomped on the burning debris until its fire was extinguished.

Picking through what was left, he recognized a black balaclava hood and a synthetic-skin prosthetic face mask. Both continued to disintegrate even as he inspected them, leading him to suspect they had been treated with a chemical to catalyze their rapid molecular breakdown. Within minutes, both would likely be completely gone, vanished without a trace.

Just like our thief,he brooded, looking up into the impenetrable darkness of the turbolift shaft.

Nogura stood at the Hub, an octagonal situation table located on the elevated supervisors’ deck of Vanguard’s operations center, and listened to the latest reports with a mounting sense of dread.

“Looks like he escaped up turbolift shaft four,”Jackson said over the comm. “I found the remnants of a disguise on top of a stalled lift car, but no sign of the artifact or the intruder.”

As the operations staff routed the starbase’s interior schematics to the Hub, the tall, curly-haired XO organized them in response to Nogura’s demands for information. “Cooper,” Nogura said. “How many ways out of that shaft are there?”

“Dozens,” Cooper said, highlighting all the access points. “And that’s not even counting the normal exit points on each deck—that’s just crawl spaces and emergency hatches.” He tapped some live vid feeds and with a fingertip dragged them across the Hub’s interactive surface. “We’re monitoring all the main exits from that shaft, and I’ve got security and engineering working to put eyes on all the other points, but it’s a lot of ground to cover.”

Feeling his blood pressure rise ever so slightly, Nogura studied the map and ruminated aloud, “If I were looking to slip out of that turbolift shaft without being noticed, where would be the best place to do it?” He traced the station diagram with his index finger and noted all the parts of the station with which it intersected. Then he stopped near the center of the station’s massive primary hull assembly. “Cooper, have security lock down the main hangar deck. Search everyone. Verify their identification. Check every bag and every short-term locker.”

Nogura turned away from the Hub and watched the vid feed from the Vault, whose internal sensors had come back online just in time to show off this spectacular breach of its security.

He frowned and declared for everyone in the ops center to hear, “Ground all docked starships. Shut down all transporter systems. No one gets on or off this station until further notice.” He paused then added with grim conviction, “Whoever did this can hide, but they can’t run.”

31

August 1, 2267

Sixty-four minutes after imposing the admiral’s lockdown on the station, Lieutenant Jackson ushered a man named Joshua Kane into an interrogation room near the security center.

“Have a seat,” Jackson told the lean, bearded man.

Kane’s face betrayed no hint of concern as he pulled back the lone chair from the gray metal table and sat down. His stare was all but blank as he watched Jackson pace on the other side of the table. He said nothing and remained still.

The door signal buzzed. Jackson said, “Come in.”

The door opened. A freshly minted Tellarite ensign from the security division stepped inside the room, handed a data slate to Jackson, and left without speaking a word.

Jackson resumed pacing as he read Kane’s dossier from the Starfleet JAG office. “You’re a man of many incredible coincidences, aren’t you, Mister Kane?” The suspect remained silent. “Do you know what I have here?”

With mock cluelessness, Kane replied, “A data slate?”

“That’s right, genius. Know what’s written on it?” He waited until Kane shrugged, then continued. “Your life story.”

“All of it? Skip to the part where I lose my virginity.” He gri

“I’m more interested in your amazing knack for being in the vicinity of major crimes,” Jackson said. “According to your file, you just happened to be on eight far-flung planets at the exact time of a spectacular unsolved heist on each world. And if we count your presence here today, that would make nine.”

Nakedly feigning surprise, Kane asked, “Has there been a burglary on the station, Lieutenant?” He deflected Jackson’s most withering glare with a smug half smile.

“You were on Zeta Aquilae in 2254 when its national armory was broken into. The contents of a warehouse filled with military-grade small arms and starship munitions were stolen. Some of those weapons were later found in the possession of Orion privateers harassing shipping in Sector Four.”

Kane lifted one bushy eyebrow. “Sounds like the Orions ought to be your prime suspects on that one.”

Still reading from the data slate, Jackson said, “You were in the capital city of Denobula when its national reserve bank was broken into and relieved of nearly three hundred million credits’ worth of priceless ancient gemstones. Several pieces from that collection were later used by a Nalori arms dealer to solicit a shipment of antiperso