“You want to tell me—”
“No,” Vaughn snapped. “Just carry out my orders, Lieutenant.” At the mess hall door Vaughn stopped. “One other thing: The Sagan’ s taken a beating the last couple of months. I want her better than ready in case we need her. Have a complete battery of systems diagnostics run from bow to stern, and an overhaul on the navigational array. Put Tenmei on it.”
Dax frowned. “All right,” she assented, “but it’ll take time.”
“Whatever it takes,” was Vaughn’s response. “Just do it.” He stepped across the threshold and the door closed behind him.
Dax watched the commander go, wondering what new crisis had just been sparked.
When Vaughn reached his quarters, he found he couldn’t recall how he’d gotten there. He knew he must have traversed the corridor from the mess hall, ridden the turbolift up to deck one, and passed through the door of his cabin, but he had no memory of making the journey. Only one thing occupied his thoughts, one impossible thing.
Setting the padd down, he touched a contact on the back wall of his cabin, causing the basin to emerge. He held his hands under the faucet and cool water gathered into his cupped hands. Bending over, he brought the water to his face, splashing his eyes, soaking his beard. He repeated the process, again and again, realizing that each breath was becoming more difficult. He stopped and stared at his hands. They were shaking.
Steady, Elias. You’ll hyperventilate or worse, push that hundred-year-old heart of yours right over the cliff.
Vaughn closed his eyes and steadied his breathing and heart rate, using a Vulcan meditation technique he’d learned…when? Forty? Fifty years ago? So hard to keep the events of his life straight in his mind sometimes. When he opened his eyes again, his aged reflection stared back at him from the mirror above the basin. Water dripped from his silver hair, forming rivulets in the deep lines of his face. Dark hollows surrounded his eyes. So many damn years…
Vaughn grabbed a towel and patted himself dry. Then he picked up the padd and collapsed on his bunk.
There was no mistaking the transponder signal. He’d committed the code to memory decades ago. But why here, and why now, of all times? He sifted through the possibilities, and decided the only answer he could believe was the one that made no sense at all.
But if it was true…if the trail they were now following led to the Valkyrie, then the closure he’d long sought for the disastrous mission to Uridi’si might finally be within his reach.
He fell asleep with the padd clutched to his chest, dreaming of the dead.
2
The world as she knew it had ended.
“Place both your hands on the tome and speak as I do: I, Asarem Wadeen…”
Her shaking hands rested on the book. Flecks of another’s blood stained her smooth brown skin. She thought she heard herself say the words as the magistrate bade her, but her voice seemed too distant, as if she were very far away from what was happening.
Bajoran security had thrown her to the floor of the Promenade’s meeting hall in the first few seconds, attempting to protect her from further weapons fire and from the chaos that had erupted. Screams filled the room, mingling with the sound of the transporter beam that had allowed the assassin to escape. People pushed against each other, some attempting to flee in panic, others trying to regain control of the situation. She’d heard Lieutenant Ro shouting orders—
“…to uphold the laws of Bajor and to act honorably as custodian of the Bajoran people…”
—General Lenaris, searching the room with his eyes for accomplices; Admiral Akaar, speaking urgently into his combadge; Colonel Kira, rushing toward the body, demanding an emergency transport to the infirmary; blood everywhere—
“…that I will protect and defend the Bajoran people from all foes, within and without…”
A half-dozen security people had taken her from the scene, three in front of her, one on either side of her holding tightly to her upper arms as they ushered her swiftly through the dim Cardassian corridors of the space station. A sixth deputy was at her back, one hand clamped to her shoulder, pushing her forward—
“…that I will face the future fearlessly…”
Phasers drawn and held high all around her, a small irrational part of Asarem had wondered briefly if she was being taken to her execution. Only later, after they’d sequestered her in her VIP quarters, when Supreme Magistrate Hegel arrived with Deep Space 9’s Bajoran doctor and confirmed the assassination, had she realized fully that she was not about to die, but that her life would never again be the same. From that day forward it belonged to Bajor, and Bajor alone.
“…and that I will conduct myself with truth and honor, and with faith in the guidance of the Prophets…”
Shakaar was dead.
“…pledging my life and my pagh to the service of Bajor.”
She felt the tome slip away as the magistrate closed the book and bowed her head. “Walk with the Prophets, First Minister Asarem.”
Too late, Ro Laren saw the truth. Hiziki Gard, aide to the Trill ambassador and security liaison for the Federation delegations, had played her from the beginning. For weeks he’d lived and worked aboard the station unobtrusively. He had consistently deferred to Ro’s authority as chief of security, seemingly content to work within, rather than attempt to override, her security precautions. He had flattered her and approached her socially as kindred spirits. He’d even flirted with her. He had done it all…just so he’d know exactly how to undermine her security measures in order to kill Shakaar.
Several of her deputies swarmed the room, some taking statements from witnesses or holding them for further questioning, others ushering delegates out of the meeting hall, away from the crime scene. She saw Councillor zh’Thane and Admiral Akaar in deep, frantic conversation with a dismayed Seljin Gandres, the Trill ambassador. The Cardassians—Gul Macet and Cleric Ekosha—had gathered in one corner of the room around a pale and shaken Vedek Yevir, who looked as if he was trying very hard not to vomit. Some of the other guests were jabbering hysterically, none louder than Quark, who was protesting Corporal Hava’s attempts to usher him out. “Laren! Laren, please!”
“Not now,” she growled. Sergeant Shul passed close to her, and Ro seized his arm. “Get the rest of these people out of here. I want the room sealed, and I want to start interviewing witnesses immediately, starting with the Trills. Have you heard from Etana yet?”
“She checked in a minute ago,” the older, gray-haired deputy said. “Minister Asarem is secure in her quarters.”
“The hell she is,” Ro said. “Keep the habitat ring locked down but evacuate the sector with Asarem’s quarters, sections 060 through 120, every level, I don’t care who’s living there. I want guards inside and outside her quarters at all times, surveillance in every corridor, patrols on the crossover bridges, and situation reports every thirty minutes. Move.”
Suddenly Taran’atar was next to her, his faced knotted in concern, his words brief and to the point: “The assassin may still be aboard the station.”
Ro took his meaning: he was volunteering to go hunt for the killer—as only a Jem’Hadar could. “Go,” Ro said.
Taran’atar nodded once and shrouded, becoming invisible, and for a disconcerting moment she felt grateful to the Founders for engineering their soldiers so well.
“Ro.”
Ro turned, finding herself under the glare of Fleet Admiral Leonard James Akaar. Nearby, Councillor zh’Thane and Ambassador Gandres looked on. Though they all appeared concerned, the Trill ambassador seemed the most visibly upset by far. “Yes, Admiral?”
“How did this happen?” Akaar demanded. “You were supposed to have—”
“I was supposed to have been securing this ceremony from outside forces that might have reasons to disrupt it,” Ro interrupted hotly. “Not from one of the Federation’s own security representatives!”
Akaar’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe if your own precautions had been more effective,
Gard would not have been able to circumvent them.” Ever since her court martial over the Garon II debacle, Akaar had never attempted to hide his disapproval of Ro. If he’d had his way, she’d probably be in the Federation penal facility right now instead of serving as Deep Space 9’s chief of security.
“And maybe if the Federation’s screening procedures were more effective, he would never have been part of the delegation to begin with,” Ro countered quietly. “You want to blame me for this disaster, Admiral? Fine. But then maybe you should ask why a member of the Trill ambassadorial staff would want to kill the first minister just as Shakaar was about to thumb the agreement to make Bajor part of the Federation.”
“Precisely the question I want to ask, Lieutenant,” a voice at her shoulder said. General Lenaris Holem of the Bajoran Militia matched Akaar’s stern gaze before turning it on zh’Thane and Gandres. “Can you explain this, Admiral? Councillor? Ambassador?”
The delegates looked at one another but said nothing, Ambassador Gandres becoming paler by the second.
It didn’t take long for Dr. Girani to make her pronouncement: Shakaar had died instantly, and the brutal damage done to his brain stem and medulla oblongata ruled out any hope of resuscitation. With emotion cracking her voice, Girani called the time of death at 1119.
The bladed projectile that had slammed into Shakaar’s neck had been absurdly redundant. As if the impact damage alone hadn’t been enough, the tip contained a phaser charge that activated on contact with Shakaar’s uppermost vertebrae, disintegrating the back of the first minister’s lower skull. Kira had never heard of a more vicious weapon.
She had stood by throughout the ordeal, feeling helpless. In a matter of seconds a single act had unraveled everything. The assassin had killed not only Shakaar, but quite possibly Bajor’s future with the Federation. Everything else the day had brought—Yevir’s startling breakthrough in forging a relationship with the Cardassians that went beyond politics, the long-awaited return of the lost Tears of the Prophets—was now tainted by what had followed. The murder of the first minister at the hands of a Federation national and a member of a diplomatic delegation would be the undoing of everything they all had worked for during the last seven years.
Magistrate Hegel, who had arrived in the Infirmary in time to witness Girani’s confirmation of the death, departed immediately, no doubt to deal with the succession. There could be no delay in the transfer of power to Asarem. Now more than ever, Bajor needed a leader.
Girani had left with the magistrate, giving Kira a few minutes alone with the body before the doctor returned to begin her autopsy. Perhaps Girani knew that Kira would need those minutes…would need the closure of saying goodbye and the reality of Shakaar’s lifeless, murdered body to prepare herself for what lay ahead.
It was difficult for her to look at Edon’s blank face, the bloody absorbant pad that had been draped around his neck, the still chest that no longer rose and fell. Unbidden, she remembered those rare mornings after they’d shared a night of passion, when she’d awoken to find him still asleep beside her. She’d watch the rise and fall of his chest, stroke his skin, feel his life beneath her fingers.
So much had changed over the years. Once they’d been friends fighting side by side in the resistance, then lovers swept together by their mutual desire to bring stability to post-Occupation Bajor. Eventually, Kira and Shakaar had drifted apart, as lovers sometimes do. Their romance had ended amicably more than two years ago, but during the last few months, something had changed.
The Attainder that had separated her from the Bajoran spiritual community notwithstanding, she And Edon had become estranged in a way that had puzzled and hurt her at first, then even made her question her ability to trust him as the leader of Bajor. Now she would never know why. Nor would she ever learn what had made him so manipulative in recent weeks, or why he’d become vindictive toward the Cardassians after working so hard at first to help them in the aftermath of the Dominion War.
Was that why he was killed? she wondered. Had Gard, or someone close to him, also noticed Shakaar’s inexplicable behavior and been so confounded by it that they’d felt compelled to kill him? As far as she was aware, only she and Asarem had known of his duplicity with the Cardassians, and unless Kira was willing to entertain the notion that Asarem had conspired to kill Shakaar in order to seize power—
Steady, Nerys. That kind of speculation before the facts are in could be as damaging as the assassination itself.
But what if someone in the Cardassian delegation had found out about Shakaar’s orders to have Asarem scuttle the Bajoran–Cardassian talks? One of them might have wanted revenge. But to use Gard? What could the connection be?
Or were there elements in the Federation, or Trill specifically, who wanted to sabotage Bajor’s admittance?
Every possibility contained its own unique component of horror, because each one meant that there were forces at large willing to harm Bajor. And that was something Kira Nerys would not allow again. Whoever was behind this, for whatever reason, Kira would learn the truth and expose it, no matter where it led. That was the vow she made as she stood over Shakaar’s body.
She stroked his cold cheek with the back of her hand. Never again, she swore. Then she squared her shoulders and marched out of the surgical bay.
Never.
3
Her back resting against the antigrav dolly, Prynn Tenmei reached up with both hands through the access panel beneath the belly of the shuttlecraft Sagan. She was up to her elbows in isolinear circuitry and subspace field coils, prying loose a stubborn ODN cable that she discovered was nearing the end of its operational life, when she lost her grip on the hyper-spanner in her hand, catching it full in the face.
“Dammit dammit dammit…” Hearing her expletives echoing through the otherwise empty shuttlebay, Prynn kicked the flight deck with her heel, sliding the dolly out from under the shuttle so she could sit up to rub her bruised cheek. Bad enough she’d been exiled to the shuttlebay to work on a craft that was hardly in need of more maintenance, she didn’t appreciate adding injury to insult.
“Maybe you should have asked the bridge to lower the gravity in here before you tried that,” a voice said behind her. “Fewer accidents. Well, less painful ones, anyway.”
Prynn looked over her shoulder and scowled, waving the spanner. “Yeah, but if I throw this at you in one-gee, it’ll hurt more,” she cautioned. “Sir.”
Lieutenant Nog, standing near the port shuttlebay entrance with his hands behind his back, grinned back. “Nice save, Ensign. And just to show you there are no hard feelings…” Nog brought both his hands out, holding two tall glasses of something frothy and white. A clear straw stuck out buoyantly from each one.
“Oh, those look good,” Prynn said.
Nog walked over to her and handed Prynn one of the glasses before sitting on the deck next to her. “Ensign Lankford mentioned you’d been in here since 0800 without taking a break. I figured you were on a roll and wouldn’t want to hit the mess hall—I know what that’s like—but I thought you’d spare time for a milk shake.”
Prynn accepted the shake gratefully and toasted Nog with it. “May the Blessed Exchequer deliver you from Destitution, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Nog said, clinking her glass.
Prynn wrapped her lips around the straw, then stopped, looking at Nog suspiciously. “Tell me you didn’t puree any tube grubs for this.”
“No way. I learned my lesson the first time.” A few months back, at Nog’s urging, Prynn had sampled a tube grub for the first time. She’d spat it out like a projectile, right past Nog’s ear. “Mine’s a grub shake,” he explained. “Yours is milk and ice cream. Lieutenant Candlewood mixed them himself.”
She eyed the glasses skeptically. “They look the same.”
“Trust me, Prynn, I wouldn’t do that to you. Cheers.”
Prynn took a slurp and closed her eyes, rapture filling her face. “God, that’s good. Tha
nks, Nog. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
Nog grinned. “My pleasure. Glad it helped.” He took a sip from his own straw and almost immediately spat it out in disgust, spraying the hull of the Sagan.
“Hey, watch it!” Prynn cried, startled. “What’s the matter?”
Nog was still trying to spit the remaining droplets. “Milk and ice cream!” he said, grimacing.
“Both of them? Hmm, that’s ironic.” Prynn resumed slurping her shake. “Lieutenant Candlewood strikes again.”
Nog regarded his glass disgustedly. “I’m gonna get even with that guy, so help me….” Candlewood had recently taken on the role of the ship’s resident practical joker, and this marked the third time Nog had fallen victim to one of his pranks.
“Maybe he has a crush on you and this is just his way of expressing it,” Prynn said pleasantly.
“Oh, thanks,” Nog said sarcastically. “As if I wasn’t sick enough from the milk shake.”
Prynn chuckled. “How’s Shar doing?”
“Better, I think,” Nog said, then shrugged. “Hard to be sure, sometimes. But I think he’s passed the worst of it. At least, until we get back to the Alpha Quadrant.”
Prynn nodded. Although it wasn’t discussed openly, word had circulated among the crew about the news Shar had received last month—the worst possible on a voyage like this one: the death of a loved one back home. Dad had given Prynn a general idea of the circumstances, and her heart went out to Shar. Having endured her own share of loss, she understood what Shar must be going through.
Nog set down his unfinished shake. “Hey, hand that over,” Prynn told him, finishing the last of the ice cream in her own glass. “No point in letting it go to waste.”
Nog shook his head and passed his shake over to Prynn. “So what did you do to get banished down here, anyway?”
Prynn rolled her eyes. “I wish I knew. I haven’t been on the bridge in three days, ever since the course change.”
Lesser Evil Page 3
