Sandcastle (A Star Trek: The Next Generation Fan Fiction)

Chapter Eight

Dominic West tapped a pen against the desk. Tap tap. Tap tap. He beat out a rhythm in tune with his orderly thoughts. Tap tap. Lawrence was a complication, one he should have foreseen. He knew that using her as an unwitting agent to carry the messages was dangerous. As a rule, he preferred his agents to know as little about their assignments as possible but that also left him vulnerable to what happened if they found out what their missions were actually for.

Tap tap. He admitted that Lawrence had performed admirably over the last year. He was no longer in charge of her program but he had kept an eye on it, checking in over time. She had been on almost a hundred missions in the past year and had succeeded in most of them. For covert operations, the success rate was astonishing. He did not know if it was her handler or her own skills that made the success possible, but he suspected the latter. Armstrong was a competent agent but had no direct control over what happened in the field.

Armstrong. Dominic checked the view screen on his computer. Armstrong was still sitting quietly, facing the wall of his small cell. The man had not said a word since they had brought him in some hours before. He had been captured at a spaceport outside of town and had put up quite a fight. He had taken out nearly a dozen guards before they overwhelmed him. He could have taken out more if his phase pistol was set to kill. Dominic snorted. It was always the ones reluctant to kill who were the easiest to control.

Tap tap. That brought him back to Lawrence. Lawrence was not one of those. She was willing to kill if the situation called for it. He knew that from her file, which he had read and reread. But she had other weaknesses: she cared too much about her fellow shapeshifters. That was what had allowed them to trap her in her current situation. Dominic had at first been angry when Grey had allowed the shapeshifter subjects to leave on their stolen shuttle but he had soon come to understand the wisdom in it. The shapeshifters had been expensive to house and train and there was no indication that they would have ever made viable operatives. Dominic was not too proud to admit when he was wrong.

Tap tap. Dominic set down the pen and read over his notes. He kept some of his most critical notes on paper. He didn't trust the network, not for everything. There were too many vulnerabilities, ones he himself had exploited from time to time. As little as he liked having a physical record of his thoughts, he liked the thought of some hacker stealing the information even less.

Dominic leaned back in his chair. It was a comfortable chair, in a comfortable office. Comfortable but not overly ornate. Dominic despised ornamentation for ornamentation's sake. He preferred his rooms to be orderly and function. Precision in all things.

He watched Armstrong sit quietly for another minute and then stood to pace the room. He had a decision to make. He could call off the attack in light of what he now knew. Grey had been in contact with Lawrence, although he could not know to what extent. His agents had seen them talking together in the park before Armstrong attacked. Then the unknown man had appeared, ruining Dominic's plans. It had been simple enough: have Armstrong kill Lawrence and have him hailed as a hero for saving the Prime Minister's life. Dominic could remain safely in the shadows. But then the man had stunned Armstrong and ruined the plan. Now, he had a rogue agent on the loose, trying to stop him.

But he still had some cards to play. Lawrence did not know who was behind the attacks. As far as he could tell, they were running blind. They had disappeared from Capital Center that morning only to reappear on the grid when Armstrong hired a transport to take them to the spaceport. It was a good idea, Dominic conceded, to go to the Icarus to look through the past logs. They had doubtless connected the dots to discovered that Grey would be assassinated on Unification Day.

Dominic again cursed the need to use Lawrence at all. Sandor had no other off-word operations at the moment. They had barely begun to dabble in off-world trade. Lawrence was the only body available to transmit the messages and Dominic had dared not use traditional communication channels. They would have been intercepted and discovered immediately. Everything had been going fine until Lawrence had started digging into the files.