It sickened him to stoop to such crude bargains, but it was necessary. The Tal Shiar had become politically vulnerable after its plan to cripple the Dominion backfired; a massive preemptive strike on the Founders’ homeworld had been thwarted by a devastating Jem’Hadar ambush that wiped out a Romulan-Cardassian fleet in the Omarion Nebula. He knew that one day soon the Tal Shiar would reassert itself, reclaim its rightful place as the shadow power of Romulan politics. But today was not that day.

  Tal’Aura slunk away from the edge of the room and moved to Valnor’s side in front of the table. “As for Shinzon,” she said, “he couldn’t be better suited to this mission.” She poured a glass of brandy for herself. “He’s a gifted field commander, and the savagery you despise in the Remans makes them ideal for assaulting a Jem’Hadar stronghold.”

  Valnor took another lip-tightening sip of his drink. “I don’t doubt their combat skills,” he said, trying to avoid eye contact. “What concerns me is their loyalty. If they see a chance to betray us, they’re certain to exploit it.”

  The edge in her voice became naked and sharp. “Your need to keep your precious secrets—especially from the senate—is what made Shinzon’s regiment your only option.” She frowned, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, her face reverted to its usual mask of sinister calm. She leaned intimately close to him.

  “As for their loyalty,” she said in a hot whisper scented with the tart perfume of brandy, “I’ve taken more than adequate precautions to contain the situation.” As her lips teased his own with the faintest tremor of contact, Valnor struggled to override his mouth’s reflexive desire to pucker.

  “This is our real reason for landing on Goloroth,” Shinzon said to the more than six hundred pointed-eared silhouettes watching him from the shadows of the Draco’s lower hangar. Besides being the only space on the ship large enough to hold the entire regiment at once, it was also the only one that Shinzon and Vkruk had personally swept clean of the Romulans’ clandestine listening devices. The lithe human paced slowly before the rows of Reman warriors, who watched him with unblinking eyes.

  Behind him was a blue-tinted hologram schematic, a dozen meters tall, of the Tal Shiar’s underground laboratory. One detail of the blueprint was highlighted in red.

  “Connected to the lab’s auxiliary power system is what appears to be a reserve fusion generator,” Shinzon continued. “But the systems connected to this device betray its true nature. Only one kind of technology would require these intricate safeguards: a thalaron core.”

  His pronouncement was met by grim silence. As he had feared, he would have to explain every detail; these were front-line soldiers, not scientists or engineers. He continued, taking care to keep his statements simple. “The core is the real reason the Romulans want this lab destroyed. They aren’t concerned about violating the Neutral Zone. Their fear is that the Federation and the Klingons will discover that the Tal Shiar has taken the lead in the biogenic-weapons arms race.”

  A few Reman silhouettes turned to confer in distant whispers. Shinzon realized they still did not grasp the true scope of what he had shown them.

  “Until now, a thalaron generator was no more than theory,” he said. “Now a working core is within our grasp. We will transform it into the heart of a weapon of unspeakable power—one that will enable us to crush all who oppose us: the Federation…the Klingons…even the Romulans themselves will bow before us.” Shinzon’s eyes shone with fiery passion. He raised his voice as he pointed at the hologram. “What you are looking at…is the first step in the liberation of Remus!”

  The hangar buzzed with the susurrus of excited voices and enthusiastic growls. Shinzon raised his hands and gestured for silence. The hangar quickly fell quiet.

  “Our orders are to destroy the lab,” Shinzon said. “And we will accomplish our mission—after we have taken the thalaron core and the lab’s central computer for ourselves.”

  Vkruk stepped forward from the shadows, his gruesome visage lined with long shadows by a dim, overhead utility light. “Most ambitious, Shinzon,” Vkruk said. “But what of the Jem’Hadar garrison in the lab? Or the rest of their battalion, less than two thousand kilometers away?”

  Shinzon could feel the Remans’ attention press forward, as if their thoughts had physical mass. He met the cold, level gaze of Vkruk and responded with a malicious, gleaming smirk.

  “We’re going to kill them all,” he said in a frightening near-whisper, “and be gone before Starfleet and its Klingon dogs arrive.”

  Commander T’Reth leaned slightly forward in her chair and steepled her pale, delicate fingers in front of her. On the Draco’s main viewer the planet Goloroth was distinguishable as a large, bright point of amber-tinted light amid the random stipple of the starfield, and it was growing larger and more distinctly spherical even as she watched.

  She swiveled her chair slowly to one side, then the other. Around her, the bridge of the Draco was quiet, the very model of efficiency. More than a dozen officers staffed their stations in silence as the warbird pulsed with the steady, muted throb of its warp engines. She surveyed the scene with cool satisfaction and turned her attention back toward the main viewscreen.

  “Time to orbit,” she said.

  Subcommander J’Nek, her second-in-command, moved swiftly but with an unhurried, almost feline grace to the helm officer’s station. He checked the helm display and turned smartly on his heel to face her. “Nine minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”

  T’Reth nodded her acknowledgment and keyed her internal comm channel. “Bridge to Centurion Shinzon. We make orbit in nine minutes. Prepare to deploy your troops. The Draco will cover your descent and provide supporting fire from orbit.”

  It had been an easy lie to tell because it was a lie of omission camouflaged with an obvious truth. T’Reth would defend Shinzon’s attack force as it made the perilous dive from the Draco to the planet surface. She would do everything within her power to keep the main Jem’Hadar battalion on a defensive footing while Shinzon led the assault on the real target, the specific details of which she had not been told and knew better than to ask for. Her lie was in not saying what she had been ordered to do when the battle was over.

  If Shinzon and his unit failed to secure their target, she was to unleash a firestorm of torpedoes and vaporize every last trace of their existence from the surface of Goloroth. If they succeeded in their mission, her orders were exactly the same.

  Another officer might have questioned why victorious soldiers of the Empire would be treated so callously. But these were not Romulan soldiers; these were Remans, little better than animals. More important, the orders officially had come from High Commander N’Vol—but they had been whispered to him by Senator Tal’Aura while a third, unnamed guest from the Lykara had watched the senator and remained silent.

  T’Reth hadn’t risen to the command of a warbird by ignoring small details. She heard the voice of the Tal Shiar in these orders, just as she had heard the icy whisper of death lingering on the wind during her last visit to the graves of her ancestors in the Rikolet on Romulus.

  The Tal Shiar, the High Command, and the senate all wanted Shinzon and his troops dead. T’Reth didn’t need to know why. The orders had been confirmed; that was all she needed to know.

  The innocuous swish of the aft turbolift door opening was all that preceded the shrieking disruptor blast that tore through the back of T’Reth’s chair and exploded out the front of her chest. The force of the blast and the sudden searing pain shocked her to her feet. Her legs betrayed her. She pitched forward, slamming face-first to the cold, gray-green metal deck. The angry whine of disruptor fire filled the bridge. With tremendous effort she twisted her head to the right.

  Subcommander J’Nek and the other bridge officers struggled to fight back, but the ambush happened too quickly. Within moments it was over. The bridge, now shrouded in acrid smoke and the pungent odor of burned flesh, fell silent.

  T’Reth clung bitterly to consciousness and to life. She couldn’t conceive of how the Jem’Hadar had penetrated their cloak and infiltrated the ship at high warp. Then she heard Shinzon’s voice calmly giving orders. A Reman soldier stepped over her. His spiked boot scraped her soft, angular cheek.

  “Vkruk, this is Shinzon. Report.”

  “All decks secured,” Vkruk said over the comm. “The Romulan crew has been neutralized. The Draco is yours.”

  “Excellent,” Shinzon said. “Report to the hangar and get the dropships ready. I’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  T’Reth fumed silently. The thought of her crew being slaughtered by Reman scum made her quake with fury. Her bridge being seized by an arrogant, upstart human drew hot, stinging tears of rage from her cobalt-blue eyes.

  Shinzon stepped into T’Reth’s field of vision. He guided four Remans to take over at conn, operations, tactical, and engineering. “Remain just outside their weapons range, and keep the cloak up,” he said to them. “Then wait for my signal. Understood?” The Remans nodded. Shinzon placed his fist against his chest in the classic form of the Romulan salute. “Victory, and freedom!” he said as he extended his arm toward his men.

  “Victory and freedom!” the Remans shouted back in unison.

  T’Reth coughed out a mouthful of bitter, emerald-green blood. “Traitor,” she rasped. Shinzon turned and looked down at her. He walked over to her and used his foot to roll her onto her back. He gleamed at her, his smirk both smug and brutal.

  “Last words, Commander?” he asked. T’Reth struggled to push the words up and out of her throat. Her final breaths foamed the blood pooling in her mouth. She spat at him. He stood above her and received her hate gladly.

  “The Empire…will have your head for this,” she said.

  His eyes narrowed. He cocked an eyebrow and leveled his disruptor at T’Reth’s face.

  “Success forgives all sins,” he said, and T’Reth’s world vanished in a blinding burst of sound and fury.

  Shinzon’s bootsteps echoed brightly as he crossed the deck of the main starboard hangar. He moved quickly between the rows of Zemba-class dropships, which were arranged in three forward-facing rows of five.

  His disruptor rifle was slung at his left side, its strap diagonally crossing his chest. Across his back he wore a slightly curved Romulan longsword. Though its ornate pommel and talon-shaped crossguard were fashioned in an ancient Romulan style, the blade was solid, ultra-lightweight duranium with a monofilament edge. Sheathed on his right hip was a matching shortsword, and on his left hip was a long, double-bladed dagger he had taken off the first Jem’Hadar he had killed, on Tibura Secundus two months earlier.

  He felt like he was the only person in the hangar. All his troops were already either aboard the dropships, in the port hangar powering up the fifty Scorpion-class attack fliers, or on the bridge of the Draco.

  Shinzon stepped toward the lead dropship, which was the only one whose aft hatch was still open. Stenciled on the side of the long, battle-scarred ship was the name Zdonek, which he recalled was a breed of feline predator found in some jungles on Romulus. He strode up its gangway and slapped the shoulder of AnteCenturion E’Mek, who sealed the hatch behind him.

  The main compartment of the battered, jury-rigged dropship, large as it was, had grown ripe with the stench of the Remans’ bloodstained, filth-encrusted armor. There was no internal illumination except for some console displays near the forward hatch to the cockpit. Regardless, Shinzon was able to account for all thirty-five members of his command platoon by nothing more than their grunted salutations. He made sure each soldier had obeyed his order to come equipped with at least one long-bladed weapon. Satisfied that they had, he stepped toward the cockpit. The cluster of armored bodies parted before him.

  In the cockpit, Vkruk was at the controls. Two other flight crew sat behind him. Shinzon settled into the co-pilot’s seat and opened a secure comm channel to the other ships in the attack group. “All wings, this is Shinzon,” he said. “We go as soon as the Draco drops to sublight. Fighters, concentrate on your targets. Dropships, use evasive pattern k’nek tal. All platoons, regroup as soon as we’re on the ground. Platoon leaders, begin final weapons check.” A flashing light on the Zdonek’s console indicated that the warbird was about to drop out of warp. Shinzon nodded to Vkruk, who powered up the dropship’s engines. “All ships, stand by to launch.”

  The hangar door opened, revealing the streaked blur of stars stretched by the effects of faster-than-light travel. Suddenly the stars retracted back into familiar, static points. Dominating the view in front of the warbird was the fiery-edged sphere of Goloroth. To Shinzon it resembled a perfect, larger-than-life eclipse. The Draco had dropped out of warp facing Goloroth’s nightside and was so close to the planet that only its middle latitudes were visible within the wide, horizontal frame of the hangar entrance.

  He keyed the comm. “All wings, deploy.”

  Vkruk piloted the Zdonek out of the hangar. There was a slight crackle of energy across the cockpit windshield as they penetrated the obscuring envelope of the Draco’s cloaking device. Off their port bow, both squadrons of Scorpion-class fighters raced ahead of them, streaking so quickly toward the planet that the lights of their impulse engines left dark, pulsing blurs slashed across Shinzon’s vision.

  The Zdonek’s tactical display showed the rest of the dropships following close behind. They had launched together in a tight cluster. Within seconds they cleared the Draco’s cloaking field and quickly widened their formation. Less than three seconds later the first blasts from the Jem’Hadar’s surface-mounted plasma cannon soared up from the planet and vaporized two dropships on the Zdonek’s starboard side.

  “All wings, increase speed,” Shinzon said. “Dive!” Plunging directly toward the planet surface would present the Jem’Hadar gunners with the smallest possible targets, but Shinzon knew that the Dominion’s targeting AIs were far more sophisticated than anything the Alpha Quadrant powers had so far devised. At best, steepening the dive might save one or two ships that would otherwise be lost. But he would need every soldier he could get after they landed.

  Four dropships accelerated ahead of the Zdonek and assumed a covering formation in front of it. No sooner had they maneuvered into position when one suffered a direct hit. The explosion consumed it in a blinding flash and peppered the Zdonek’s doubled forward shields with fiery debris. The other three vessels ahead of the Zdonek immediately closed into a triangular cover formation.

  A nerve-rattling boom shook the Zdonek as it pierced the upper atmosphere. Shinzon activated the dimming filters to reduce the glare of the thermal effects caused by the ship’s rapid descent. All around the Zdonek, each remaining dropship was preceded by a fiery nimbus, as if a squadron of falling stars were raining down on the Jem’Hadar.

  The rumble of a distant explosion signaled the loss of another dropship. Shinzon checked his tactical display. He had left the Draco only thirty seconds ago, and already he had lost eight dropships and nearly half his fighter escorts.

  Outside the cockpit, dim shapes on the surface of Goloroth began to grow more distinct. The Zdonek and the other dropships plummeted at supersonic speed directly toward the main Jem’Hadar encampment, which Shinzon was pleased to see was illuminated by fires and explosions wrought by his Scorpion-class fighters, which drew most of the enemy fire away from the dropships.

  Then the view changed into a sickening blur.

  Even with inertial dampeners, Shinzon could feel the gut-twisting G-force caused by Vkruk’s rapid shift from power dive to level flight. Shinzon’s jaw clenched and his eyes squeezed shut as he was pressed into his seat with merciless, crushing force. When the pressure eased, he opened his eyes to see the jagged, barren landscape of Goloroth blurring past on both sides of the dropship. The battle-scarred craft bobbed along at a dangerously low altitude as it dodged plasma cannon fire coming from the Jem’Hadar base behind it.

  “Hang on,” Vkruk said, “we’ll be out of range in just a few more—” Blinding light and searing heat accompanied the deafening blast that rocked the Zdonek. The dropship pitched forward and began to roll erratically. “Damage report!” Shinzon said. The two flight crewmembers behind him struggled to extract any useful information from their scrambled consoles.

  “Direct hit, sir!” one said, shouting over the din of the damaged ship’s death spiral. “Port engine gone. Shields have failed.”

  Shinzon looked to Vkruk, who fought a losing battle against the sparking helm controls. “Can you hold her together?”

  Vkruk nodded. “I can make the landing zone.”

  Shinzon turned and shouted back through the open door to his troops, who were calm and unfazed despite the smoke that filled the troop compartment.

  “E’Mek,” Shinzon said. “Brace for crash landing.” The antecenturion nodded and saluted in reply.

  Shinzon turned his attention back toward the landscape ahead of the Zdonek as E’Mek barked orders at the troops. The dropship jerked as it sheared off the top of a spire-shaped rock formation and continued its shuddering, unbalanced descent toward the landing zone, which was now only fifty kilometers away.

  “Thirty seconds to the LZ,” Vkruk said. The dropship’s one remaining engine whined in protest, and its fractured hull rattled violently. The wounded ship’s persistent clangor was drowned out for a moment by a painful metallic screech, as a chunk of its exterior hull plating was torn away by the shearing force of the winds that buffetted the craft.

  Shinzon checked the straps on his seat’s crash harness.

  “Ten seconds,” Vkruk said.

  Up ahead, Shinzon could discern the shapes of seven other dropships that had already touched down at the landing zone. Then a secondary explosion, less powerful than the first but still jarring, rocked his ship. The anguished howling of the port engine ceased, and the ship’s nose dipped toward the harsh, rocky, and rapidly approaching planet surface.