Star Trek: The Fall: A Ceremony of Losses

by David Mack

  “Did your crew find any trace of such a cure aboard the captured ship, or on Bashir?”

  “Not yet, but we’re still looking. What should I do if he really has it?”

  “Leave that for the politicians to worry about. Our orders are to contain the situation to the maximum possible degree. However, no matter what we do, sooner or later news of Bashir’s claim will make it to the media. We need to have him off the political stage before that happens, and every moment he remains in orbit of Andor, even if he’s in custody, is another moment we risk this debacle turning into a diplomatic crisis.”

  “I agree, sir. Which is why I have my crew working double shifts to bring the warp drive back online as soon as possible.”

  Akaar shook his head. “I fear that won’t suffice, Captain. As I said when I tasked your ship with this mission, the Falchion and Warspite were assigned to act as your backup, should the need arise. I’m directing them now to rendezvous with you at Andor. They should arrive within six hours. At that time, you will transfer Bashir and his accomplice to the custody of Captain Unverzagt on the Warspite.”

  Dax didn’t like the sound of that. “Admiral, I don’t really think that’s—”

  “The decision’s made, Captain. Those are your orders.”

  It was clear there was no room for discussion, so Dax acquiesced with a nod. “Yes, sir.” She took a moment to collect herself. “Can I ask what’ll happen to Doctor Bashir?”

  “First, a closed-proceedings court-martial. Then, barring some heretofore unknown manner of thermodynamic miracle, a swift conviction followed by a sentencing hearing.”

  “I see.”

  Perhaps detecting the note of sympathy in her voice, Akaar put an edge on his. “Captain, feel no pity for Doctor Bashir. Put aside your personal history with the man and see his actions for what they are: espionage and treason. No matter how noble his motives might be, he risked the security of the Federation—and that decision was not his to make. So resist the temptation to see him as some kind of hero. For now, treat him as a prisoner, and nothing more.”

  There was truth in what Akaar was saying, but it stung all the same. “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me know if his briefing yields any actionable intelligence.”

  “I will.”

  “Starfleet Command out.” Akaar ended the transmission, and the image on Dax’s ready room monitor switched for a moment to the Starfleet emblem before fading to black.

  Torn between the demands of duty and the bonds of affection, Dax stood from her desk and resigned herself to that which needed to be done. It was time for her to talk to Bashir.

  • • •

  It wasn’t the isolation of the brig that bothered Bashir, or the indignity of being locked up and kept under remote supervision, like some kind of animal. It was the tedium; the boredom of being cooped up with nothing to do and no one to talk to. In a full-time Federation correctional facility, there would be reading materials, ranging from bland to boring, and access to music. But this was a starship’s brig, designed for short-term detention pending transfer to a larger venue, such as a starbase or a planetside penal colony.

  Thanks to his genetically enhanced memory, he had the option of replaying a vast range of music in his imagination, and he could recall word-for-word most if not all of the books and papers he had ever read. Such measures were taxing and tended to be unsatisfying; he yearned for novelty, for discovery, for the allure of new experiences.

  I can always look forward to long-term incarceration, he consoled himself ironically. That should present me with a boundless frontier of new experiences.

  From beyond the force field that demarcated the edge of his cell he heard a door sigh open, followed by the approach of footsteps as the door hushed closed. He knew the weight and cadence of those footfalls.

  Dax stepped around the corner into Bashir’s limited field of view. She stood in front of his cell and crossed her arms, then regarded him with disappointment. “Julian.”

  Bashir stood and showed her the courtesy of facing her. “Ezri.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “You mean physically? I’m fine, thank you for asking.” She eyed the cell, though Bashir couldn’t tell if she was assessing its comforts or its weaknesses. Knowing her, probably both at the same time. He interrupted her survey by leaning into her line of sight. “Something I can do for you? Or did you just pop in to say good-bye before Starfleet drops me down a black hole?”

  He had hoped to lighten the moment, but Dax was in no mood for his brand of humor. “Starfleet Command wants you back on Earth in a big hurry. Since we’re stuck here making repairs for a few days, they’re sending two more ships to take you off our hands.”

  “How thoughtful of them.”

  “You joke, but this’ll end badly for you, Julian.”

  He swallowed the urge to laugh. “I always figured it would.”

  Earnest and desperate, she asked, “Then why did you do it?”

  Bashir looked at Dax, and for a moment he was sure he saw in her a spark of the young, idealistic counselor he’d once loved, and the spirit of the proud scientist-soldier she had been in her life before this one. “You know why.”

  She dropped her arms and started pacing, as if she were the one who had been caged. “For the Andorians? They turned their backs on us!”

  “Not all of them. Just a slim majority—some of whom acted out of passion.”

  Dax took his point in stride. “They are passionate. Have to give them that.” She turned to confront him. “But this? Stealing top-secret data from your own government? Throwing away your career? Your reputation? What did the Andorians ever do to deserve this kind of sacrifice?”

  “Nothing. They didn’t have to. Innocent people shouldn’t be made to beg for their lives. The weak and the suffering shouldn’t have to kowtow to receive help, from us or anyone else.”

  He could see from her shocked expression that he’d struck a chord in her conscience. She turned away, embracing denial over truth. “Principle is all well and good, Julian, but you also swore an oath as a Starfleet officer. To defend the Federation. To obey lawful orders.”

  “I also seem to recall more than one ethics instructor at Starfleet Academy teaching us that more was expected of us than blind obedience. That we had a higher duty, to the truth, and an obligation to resist orders that are immoral.”

  Dax tensed, as if he had offended her. “What part of ‘don’t steal top-secret data from your own government and give it to a foreign power’ struck you as immoral, Julian?”

  “The part that expects me to ignore my oath as a medical doctor and be a passive bystander to the slow death of a sentient species.”

  Back on the defensive, Dax once again crossed her arms. “So now your Hippocratic oath trumps your oath of service? Or your obligations as a Federation citizen?”

  “Yes, I think it does.”

  “The law disagrees.”

  “Laws are written by fallible beings. Sometimes the law is wrong.” Bashir felt a trembling in his limbs and realized the argument with Dax was flooding his bloodstream with adrenaline. He started to pace just to expend some of the pent-up energy coursing inside him. “Ezri, if you could’ve heard my conversation with Ishan, if you’d heard how callous he was when I told him we had the chance to cure the Andorians, you’d understand why I’m so angry.”

  “If the president pro tem ordered you to stand down, he must have his reasons.”

  Her apology for authority bolstered his indignation. “His political ambitions aren’t worth condemning the Andorian species to slow extinction by chronic miscarriage.”

  “Is it possible you’re exaggerating just a bit?”

  “I don’t think so. Ishan’s suppressing the cure for the same reason he ordered a pointless embargo. He’s using the Andorians as scapegoats, as an easy way for him to score cheap political points during the run-up to the special election. At best, he’s a crass opportunist; at worst, he’s a genoci
dal thug in the making.”

  Another pregnant pause made Bashir wonder if his criticisms had finally found their mark. Then Dax shook her head. “Even if you’re right, he’s still the one in charge, and I have my orders. I’m not saying I don’t sympathize with your reasons, Julian. It’s just that as a starship captain, I don’t have the luxury of indulging my conscience. . . . I’m sorry.”

  Bashir was crestfallen; he had hoped for better from her. All he could do now was try to salvage some small measure of victory from his moment of defeat. “I understand. And it was always my intention to turn myself in when this was over. All I’m asking is that you not make my sacrifices be in vain. Before you hand me over, let me deliver the cure to the Andorians.”

  “I can’t do that, Julian, and you know it.”

  “All I’m asking for is an hour on the planet’s surface, just to meet with Shar and—”

  “I can’t. As long as you’re in here, you’re under my authority. The moment I let you set foot on Andor, you’d be under their jurisdiction, and there’s no telling how that would play out. That’s not a risk any sane commander in my position would take.”

  Desperation welled up from within him. “All right, I see your point, and that’s reasonable. But I don’t need to leave the ship. The cure is in my bloodstream, as a dormant retrovirus that will repair the Andorian genome. Just let Simon come in and take a sample of my blood, and then he can beam it down to Shar and—”

  “That’s not happening, either, Julian. Your cure contains segments of classified intel that I’ve been ordered to contain at all costs. Humanitarian concerns aside, I have orders not to let you deliver that cure, on the grounds that it would compromise Federation security.”

  It was such an absurd statement that Bashir exploded with rage. “And you believe that? Does that rationale make any sense to you? Or does it sound like some politician’s ginned-up excuse to play God with the lives of people who can never hold him accountable?”

  Her eyes burned with cold resentment. “Everything with you has to be an extreme, doesn’t it, Julian? Heroes and villains. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Never any room in your worldview for subtlety or nuance, is there? If someone doesn’t agree with you, they must be stupid, or selfish, or part of a grand conspiracy. Well, I hate to break it to you, Julian: Sometimes people are just struggling to make the best of bad situations. Like this one.”

  She walked away without a look back. Bashir listened as the unseen door slid open, and then the echoes of Dax’s footsteps receded until the door hushed closed, restoring the brig’s ambience of deathly quiet.

  Too wired to relax, Bashir paced until his adrenaline levels dropped, and then he flopped back onto the bunk and stared at the overhead. Alone with his thoughts, he recalled every argument he and Ezri had ever had as a couple; though this latest contretemps bore little resemblance in substance to their long-ago lovers’ tiffs, the style had been eerily familiar.

  He had always assumed that as he and those around him grew older, they all would change, some no doubt in unexpected ways. Now he saw the opposite was true; neither he nor Ezri was any different than they had been a decade earlier. If anything, they had become more like themselves over the years, as if time had distilled them to their essences.

  We didn’t grow apart, he realized. We were always apart. We just didn’t know it.

  Twenty-four

  Shar walked at a brisk pace, one gloved hand pressed to his ear to muffle the sounds of the busy capital street so he could hear Torv’s mealymouthed whining over his in-ear transceiver.

  “Yes, Shar, we’re sure. The Starfleet ship has Bashir in custody, but they’re not going anywhere. Sounds like you’ve got a few hours before their friends come to get the doctor.”

  He kept his voice down to minimize the risk of his side of the conversation being overheard by the daytime throng of pedestrians surrounding him. “How many hours?”

  “Who knows? It’s not like Starfleet publicizes the movements of its starships.”

  “Fine, it doesn’t matter at this point. Have you uploaded the comm recordings?”

  “They’re on the transfer node. I’ve deducted my fee from your account.”

  Shar suppressed his rising urge to indulge in sarcasm. “Thank you, Torv.”

  The Ferengi remained snide in the face of courtesy. “Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment, but stay by the comm. Shar out.” He reached down to his belt and tapped the master switch on his personal comm, ending the private call.

  Not wanting to attract attention, he stepped out of the flow of foot traffic and put his back to the wall of one of the avenue’s stately old skyscrapers, a marvel of carved stone and mirrored glass. Though some people felt the new capital’s past as one of Andor’s commercial centers made it seem less dignified than the old capital, Shar admired the modernity and sleek style of Lor’Vela. Most of the buildings in this part of the city were pressed up against one another with nary a sliver of air between them. Most blocks hid enclosures shared by multiple buildings, large open squares converted to fountains and green spaces. Deprived of the convenience of back alleys, the lofty towers of commerce bunched their service entrances on the side streets.

  Another knot of well-dressed civilians drifted past Shar, who merged into their ranks with ease. He had prepared for this outing by adjusting his attire to match the environment: a well tailored midnight blue suit with a light-gray shirt, black shoes polished to an almost obscene mirror-perfect finish, and a bespoke charcoal overcoat of the softest, warmest natural fibers he had ever touched. His ultra-fashionable sunglasses hid his paranoid eyes as he broke from the pack, picking up his pace as he turned the corner.

  He reached under his jacket to the small of his back as he neared one of the service doors and pulled out a Starfleet-issue tricorder. A quick tweak of its settings, and he was ready.

  No one was approaching in either direction on his side of the street, and no one on the other side seemed to be paying him any mind. Shar checked the markings on the service door, just to make sure he’d targeted the right one. A small stenciled warning at eye level read ANS EMPLOYEES ONLY—NO TRESPASSING.

  I’m not trespassing. Just visiting unannounced.

  A single pulse from the tricorder released the door’s computer-controlled magnetic locks. He pulled it open, slipped inside, and pulled it shut behind him. The cinder-block corridor on the other side was narrow and lit with sickly green lights. He jogged around a couple of tight corners and up a few short flights of stairs. Tucked into one of the building’s dusty back corners was a freight elevator. It had been designed to move cargo and equipment delivered by shuttles to the rooftop platform, and as such its lone car was spacious and high-ceilinged. Shar pressed the elevator call button and waited. A status screen beside the call button informed him of the elevator’s downward progress to his sublevel. As it drew near, he stepped to one side and took cover behind some stacked boxes, in case the lift proved to be occupied.

  A chime heralded its arrival. The double-layered doors opened, one retracting upward, the other descending to fill the gap between the car and the floor, to better facilitate the transfer of cargo on old-fashioned wheeled load lifters. There was no sound from inside the lift, so Shar emerged from hiding and stepped inside it.

  Its control panel was keycard secured. That was a wrinkle Shar hadn’t anticipated. He was searching the tricorder’s settings to see if it could bypass this obstacle, when a weathered, brawny young thaan in a grimy red maintenance coverall interrupted his labors.

  “Who are you? And what are you doing with that?”

  Shar greeted his would-be interrogator. “Hi! I’m an engineer in the IS department—just started, actually—and this is one of our newest inventions. Here, check it out.” He handed his tricorder to the thaan with cheerful enthusiasm. The thaan wrinkled his brow but took the device from Shar. When the maintenance worker turned his eyes toward the device’s screen, Shar punched him in the
throat, boxed his antennae with a fierce clap of his hands, and landed a swift kick to his groin. As the thaan dropped to his knees, Shar plucked his tricorder out of the thaan’s hand, then he kneed the worker in the jaw to finish the fight.

  “Sorry about that.” He dragged the unconscious thaan inside the freight elevator and snagged the access keycard from the front chest pocket of the thaan’s coveralls. “But you’ll thank me someday.”

  He swiped the card in and out of the reader beside the controls, then pressed the pad for the rooftop. It lit up, the doors closed, and the lift car began its swift ascent. Ten seconds to the roof, Shar noted. Might as well put the time to use. He powered up his tricorder, logged on to his private data-transfer node, and downloaded the file Torv had uploaded using Shar’s public encryption key. It was one of the oldest methods of anonymous, secure communications and data transfer, but it remained one of the most effective, even after several centuries of use.

  The lift doors opened, and a frozen edge of wind slashed at him. Winter’s gusts were stronger and colder atop the building than at street level. Up here there was no shelter, nothing to stand in the path of the gale and bear the brunt of its frigid wrath. Shar traded his tricorder for a Type-1 phaser and fired a single shot into the elevator’s controls. Then he clutched the lapels of his overcoat shut with one hand and held on to his phaser in the other as he made his way across the rooftop. He paused at the door to the emergency stairs and fragged its lock controls, then moved on to the structure that housed the building’s orbital communications uplink. He opened its door with another precision phaser blast and ducked inside, out of the lacerating cold.

  Banks of circuitry and walls of hardware blinked and hummed with power—this was a system Shar understood well. He had seen many like it during his service in Starfleet, on his way to earning a top rating in communications systems while serving aboard the Tamberlaine. The uplink was the Andor News Service’s portal to the galaxy at large, its means of sending and receiving subspace signals from distant worlds and ships in orbit. But to a skilled technician such as Shar, it was even more than that: it was a backdoor into ANS’s hard-wired planetary network. From here, he could take advantage of the entire network’s formidable broadcast capabilities.