Quark looked. Macet was staring up at Treir. The gul was still trying to speak as a thin trail of smoke wound its way up from his open mouth.
Treir turned him over, probably thinking that Macet might need to vomit whatever it was that had gotten into him. Never seen kanar do that.
And there on the back of his neck, Quark saw something that looked like a pale blue thorn wriggling.
15
“It could be anything,” Kira said, frowning at the energy profile displayed on the sciences station monitor on the bridge of the Gryphon.“I mean, it’s obviously residue from the distortion field created by a cloaking device, but the telltale fluctuations that would identify it as Klingon, Romulan, or something else are completely absent.”
The science officer, a Tellarite named Croth, agreed with her. “One might almost say it’s generic,” he said. “I realize that isn’t terribly scientific, but it best describes what we’re seeing here. This field shows no sign of any of the unique modifications that cloak-enabled species utilize to enhance the effectiveness of such technology. In that regard, it’s very—what’s the human expression?—‘no frills.’”
“So it’s either very sophisticated,” Mello interpreted, standing behind Kira with her arms folded across her chest, “or very unsophisticated.”
Croth smiled as he looked up at Mello, his eyes narrowing to tiny slits. “Aptly put, Captain, but there’s no real way to know which based on the current data.”
“I assume you’ve tried a tachyon sweep?” Kira asked. Over the years it had been learned that such sweeps could be most effective in exposing a cloaked ship. Usually.
Lieutenant Spillane, the security officer standing opposite Kira, nodded. “We’ve tried it hourly since before we left the Bajoran system. Nothing. Whatever’s generating this field is constant. We can’t even tell how far ahead of us it is, and we’re already pushing warp 9.5.”
“What’s our ETA at Trill?” Kira asked.
“Twenty-nine hours,” Montenegro answered.
“We hope to catch our quarry much sooner than that, Colonel,” Mello said, trying to be reassuring.
Kira considered that. “What about Starfleet ships in Trill’s immediate vicinity? Could they intercept—?”
“Admiral Akaar has already made arrangements for the three ships nearest Trill to sweep the region,” said the captain. “And Starfleet forces stationed on the planet are on high alert.”
“What if the Trill government tries to protect the assassin?”
No one answered. She suspected none of them wanted to consider that possibility. That was when Kira realized the larger implications Mello and her crew were facing. If Trill tried to protect Gard, it meant a Federation member government was complicit in Shakaar’s assassination. And where would that lead? Revolution on Trill? Secession from the Federation? Trill being thrown out as a rogue nation? Schism as other worlds started taking sides? War? This was much bigger than Bajor, Kira realized. This had the potential to tear the Federation apart.
“Captain,” someone called from across the bridge. It was Lieutenant Grigoryeva, the operations officer. “I’m detecting a spike in one of the EPS conduits in engineering. Looks like it’s building to an overload.”
“Can you cut power?”
“Not from here.”
Mello went to her command chair. “Bridge to engineering.”
“Bhatnagar here, Captain. We’re aware of the problem. I’m trying to reduce—Neil, help me get this out of—”
The sound of an explosion filled the bridge.
“Engineering, what happened? Bhatnagar, this is the captain. Report!” Mello glanced at Montenegro, who didn’t hesitate. He was on his way to the turbolift even as Mello was alerting sickbay. Kira found herself rushing to follow the first officer into the turbolift.
“Engineering,” Montenegro said, then looked questioningly at Kira.
“Thought I might be able to help,” Kira said.
The first officer nodded, but was obviously preoccupied with whatever had gone wrong in engineering, muttering, “I told her we were taxing our power systems.”
Kira frowned. “Who? The engineer?”
Montenengro shook his head. “The captain.”
Kira wondered what to make of that. Most first officers knew better than to publicly voice disagreements they might have with their C.O.s. Montenegro looks pretty young, though, Kira noted. He can’t have had this post too long. Maybe it’s just inexperience.
They traveled the rest of the way to engineering in silence. Two medics were already running down the corridors when they stepped out of the turbolift: one of them was Dr. Mei Ling Xiang, Gryphon’ s chief medical officer. Kira had met her during the initial briefing after she’d beamed aboard from DS9.
The doors to engineering split open as they approached. Coughing crewmen poured out on a cloud of smoke, two of them supporting a man with some of the worst plasma burns Kira had ever seen. The crewman set the wounded engineer down on the deck and Xiang immediately went to work. “Conduit burst right next to him,” one of the crewmen panted. “We were able to get to Hallerman easily, but the chief is still in there. She’s pinned beneath a bulkhead. A couple of the techs were working to free her, but the room filled up so fast, the vents couldn’t keep up.”
“Status of the warp core?” Montenegro asked.
The crewman shook his head. “I’m not sure, sir.”
Montenegro cursed and looked at Kira. “Ready?”
“Let’s go,” Kira said at once. Together they ran into engineering, unable to see more than two meters in front of them. It was hot, and the Klaxon was blaring. Montenegro felt for a locker near the door and retrieved two filter masks. He handed one to Kira, who finally allowed herself to breathe as she fit the device over her nose and mouth.
“I need to check the warp core!” Montenegro shouted over the alarm, his voice muffled through the mask. He pointed. “Bhatnagar is probably in that direction. Can you help them get her out?”
Kira nodded and started moving. Two steps later Montenegro was already invisible through the smoke, and her skin was slick with sweat. Ventilation system must have been affected by the explosion. This room should be clear by now.
Kira began to see shadows in the smoke. Two crewman in breathing masks were straining to lift a slab of debris off a woman who was pinned almost to her neck. As Kira drew close, she recognized the woman as another attendee of Mello’s staff meeting: Lieutenant Commander Savitri Bhatnagar, chief engineer. Her burns didn’t look as bad as Hallerman’s.
One of the crewman noticed her. “She’s out cold. I think she may have some broken bones,” he said. “When we lift, you pull her clear.”
Kira nodded and positoned herself behind Bhatnagar’s head. The woman was coughing spasmodically. Kira took off her mask and put it over the engineer’s face. Then she slipped her hands under Bhatnagar’s shoulders and managed to get a grip under her armpits. “Ready!” Kira shouted over the Klaxon.
“On three,” the crewman said. “One…two…three!” The crewman and his partner heaved. The slab lifted and Kira slid the engineer out. The crewmen dropped the slab with a crash, and one of them helped Kira lift Bhatnagar and carry her out of engineering.
As they set Bhatnagar down for the doctor to work on, Kira saw that the earlier patient, Hallerman, his rescuers, and the other medic were already gone, probably on their way to sickbay. Kira sat back and coughed, wiping her forehead with her sleeve. “Will she be all right?” she rasped.
Xiang didn’t look up as she tended to her patient. “A few burns…a broken ankle…Most of the damage is to her lungs, but it’s nothing I can’t fix. Whoever put the mask on her saved her life. A few more seconds exposed to that stuff and her lungs would have been seared beyond repair.” She looked at Kira, who was still coughing. “You should report to sickbay, Colonel.”
“In a minute,” Kira said, trying to breathe normally. “How’s Hallerman?”
Xiang shot
her a quick smile. “He’ll make it, too.”
Kira nodded and grimaced. Her chest felt as if it were on fire. She rose to her feet and tapped her combadge. “Kira to bridge.”
“Mello here. Go ahead, Colonel.”
“There were two injuries in the blast, Captain. Both are expected to make a full recovery.”
“Good,” Mello said. “What about the warp core?”
“Montenegro is checking on that now,” Kira panted. Where the hell was he?“Stand by, Captain.”
Just as she was about to reenter the engine room, Gryphon’ s first officer staggered out, soaked with sweat and panting as he took off his breathing mask. Kira grabbed his shoulder to steady him as his hand reached for his combadge. “Montenegro to bridge. The warp core is stable. I’ve rerouted the plasma flow from the damaged conduit, but we still need a crew to work on venting the engineering section. All things considered, though, it could have been much worse.”
“Good work, Commander. I was worried we might have to drop out of warp.”
For a second Montenegro’s eyes darted to Kira.
“Lieutenant Grigoryeva is coordinating the repair crews. Report to the bridge when you get cleaned up.”
“Yes, sir. Montenegro out.”
Two corpsman arrived with an antigrav gurney for Bhatnagar. While they tended to the patient, Xiang stepped up to Montenegro and Kira and scanned them with her medical tricorder. She scowled. “Both of you, get to sickbay now, before I call the captain and get her to issue the order. Thirty seconds of your time is all you’ll need to give up.”
Montenegro nodded wearily. “All right, Mei. We’ll be there in a few minutes, I promise.”
Xiang sighed and followed the gurney down the corridor, shaking her head.
Montenegro looked at Kira and rolled his eyes. “Doctors. Thanks for pitching in, by the way.”
Kira tried to tell him she was glad she could help, but wound up making a noise that sounded more like she was clearing her throat.
Montenegro frowned. “Are you all right?”
Kira nodded and managed to say in a hoarse whisper, “Chest hurts. I think I’m inclined to follow the doctor’s orders.”
“Ouch,” Montenegro said. “Yeah, you sound awful. Come on. I’ll take you to sickbay.”
True to Dr. Xiang’s word, Kira’s treatment took only half a minute to complete. When it was done, the pain in her chest was gone, and she was speaking and breathing normally again. Montenegro, on the other hand, insisted that he felt fine, that he’d kept his mask on the entire time he was in the engine room, and no amount of cajoling by the nurse would convince him to sit down and relax. Kira had seen this sort of behavior before—had been guilty of it herself, in fact: officers who thought it was important for every member of the crew to visit the doctor except themselves. In this particular case, though, Montenegro seemed preoccupied, and Kira got the distinct impression he had something to say to her, because he’d made a point of waiting during her treatment.
They exited together to the sound of Xiang’s renewed threats to inform Captain Mello of Montenegro’s apparently customary lack of cooperation with the medical staff, and it wasn’t until they were inside a turbolift again that the commander did something that truly surprised Kira. “Halt,” he instructed the lift. “Colonel, may I speak with you?”
“Of course, Commander,” Kira said. “What’s on your mind?”
“I realize we don’t know each other very well, and I really shouldn’t be discussing this at all. But I think it would be even less appropriate if I brought the matter up with another member of the crew, and I could really use the benefit of an outsider’s perspective.”
Kira frowned. “What is it?”
Montenegro sighed as if searching for the right words. “It’s about Captain Mello.” He waited to see Kira’s reaction, perhaps thinking she might cut him off immediately for the breach of protocol. Discussing one’s commanding officer with a third party was a touchy matter, but Kira didn’t feel right shutting Montenegro down when this was clearly something he needed to unburden himself about. When she said nothing, he continued, “She’s become…I guess the word I’m looking for is distant of late. I don’t know how else to describe it. And it’s not just the occasional bad mood. I’m talking about a change in personality.”
That gave Kira pause. “Have you mentioned your concerns to the CMO?”
Montenegro shook his head. “Frankly, I’ve been afraid to. You may not know this, but I haven’t been the ship’s X.O. that long.”
Kira smiled. “How old are you, Commander?”
Montenegro looked embarrassed. “Twenty-five, sir. I received a battlefield promotion during the war. My assignment to Gryphon came afterward.”
He feels in over his head, Kira realized. Like Nog, sometimes. The war had turned a lot of junior Starfleet officers into seasoned combat veterans very quickly, and fatalities among more experienced officers had resulted in young men and women being thrust by necessity into jobs many of them weren’t ready for. Becoming executive officer of an Akiraclass starship at age twenty-five must have been overwhelming.
“I really don’t know that I can tell you anything helpful, Commander,” Kira said finally. “It isn’t my place to advise you on your relationship with your commanding officer. I will say this: unless you feel Captain Mello’s behavior is putting the ship or members of the crew in danger, any changes she may be experiencing are nobody’s business but her own.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Montenegro said. “And it’s not that I think she’s become a bad captain. It’s just that…when I first came aboard, she took me under her wing. It seemed like we developed a rapport. Now I feel like I don’t know her anymore.”
Now, that I can relate to, Kira thought. “It’s a difficult thing when a person close to you changes, personally or professionally,” she said.
“You understand what I’m talking about,” Montenegro said.
“I think I do, but unless you plan to bring it up to Captain Mello directly, this is something you’ll have to work out yourself.”
Montenegro nodded. “Resume,” he told the lift.
They rode the rest of the way to Kira’s deck in silence. She found herself unable to think about anything except Shakaar.
Later that ship’s night, after Mello had commended Kira for her contribution in saving Lieutenant Commander Bhatnagar’s life, and various members of the crew had offered her their personal thanks, Kira retired to her cabin and tried to sleep. It came to her slowly; she was still wired from the day’s events. But after she finally dozed off, at the midpoint of Gryphon’ s voyage and eighteen hours out of Deep Space 9, Kira was awakened by a call from the bridge.
“Kira,” she responded, forcing herself to alertness. “Go ahead.”
“Sorry to wake you, Colonel,” the duty officer said, “but you have a priority message from Deep Space 9. It’s encrypted for your eyes only. Shall I relay it to your quarters?”
“Yes, thank you.” Kira sat in front of the companel and keyed the message. After the computer verified her retinal scan and voiceprint, the screen resolved into the face of Leonard James Akaar.
“Colonel. I sincerely hope this has not reached you too late. But because I no longer know who you can trust, I felt compelled to send this as an encrypted recording, rather than try to speak with you live. I fear that the situation is more dire than any of us imagined. Listen carefully. We have verified that First Minister Shakaar was under the influence of an alien parasite, a member of a hostile and extremely dangerous species known to both Starfleet and Trill. This creature has been controlling Shakaar for months, using him to advance its kind’s hidden agenda, which somehow involved Bajor’s entry into the Federation. It was for this reason that Shakaar was murdered: to thwart whatever the parasites were trying to achieve. I know this news comes as a shock, but I assure you the evidence we have is incontrovertible. And more, we believe that another of these creatures has infiltrated
Gryphon.
“Ro was right about the assassin. We have captured Hiziki Gard here on Deep Space 9. There never was a cloaking signature leading toward Trill. We believe this was a ruse created by the creature aboard the Gryphon in order to reach Trill and use the ship to attack the planet in retaliation. You cannot permit this, Colonel. The threat posed by this species is not just to Bajor, but to worlds throughout the Alpha Quadrant.
“Unfortunately, there is no way for us to know who the parasite has taken over aboard Gryphon. However, there should be a classified security file in the ship’s computer, XENO-02884/1, that will tell you everything Starfleet knows about these creatures. You will need the following access code to decrypt the file: Akaar Kappa One One Seven Override Twelve.
“You must stop the Gryphon from reaching Trill, Colonel, no matter what the cost.”
The recording ended, and for a moment Kira simply stared dumbstruck at the Federation emblem that filled her companel screen. Then her hands began to fly over the interface console, retrieving and decrypting Akaar’s top-secret file: a classified report from over a hundred years ago by one Fleet Captain Christopher Pike, detailing a disastrous first contact with a symbiont-like life-form inside a rogue comet. Three more reports from only twelve years ago by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Dr. Beverly Crusher, and Admiral Gregory Quinn, describing a horrific conspiracy that almost succeeded in taking over the United Federation of Planets.
Prophets…
She read the file a second time, her thoughts a maelstrom of denial and realization. Part of her simply couldn’t believe the insidious nature of the threat they were facing: creatures that subsumed identities, attacking not only their hosts, but entire civilizations from inside. And all that time I kept asking myself what was wrong with Shakaar, why he’d been acting so different, why he’d changed so much…. It wasn’t really him at all, but some monster inside controlling him. She found herself wondering whether any part of him had understood what had happened, if the real Shakaar had been trapped inside all that time, screaming to get out while that thing used his body, his voice, his position….
Lesser Evil Page 14
