by David Mack
Akaar forced himself not to tense his muscles, hunch his shoulders, or clench his jaw. To the president pro tem and chief of staff, he knew he would appear calm and unemotional. But deep inside, in the dark pit of his warrior soul that he hid from all who knew him, he imagined what it would feel like to seize Ishan and Velk and break them like dry twigs.
He answered Velk in as level and unaffected a timbre as he could muster. “No.”
“Then I suggest you stick to running Starfleet and leave the politics to us.”
“Whatever you think best, sir.”
Ishan frowned. “Contact us the minute the Falchion and Warspite are under way with the Aventine. And reassign whatever resources you need to maintain the embargo. That’s all.” He reached forward, and the screen switched to the Starfleet emblem before fading to darkness.
Akaar fumed at the blank screen on his office desktop. His pulse pounded out a devil’s beat in his temples, and he clenched his left fist until his fingernails bit into his palm. Ishan was legally his commander in chief, and Akaar was bound by oath to obey his orders to the letter. But the letter was not the spirit, so that was where Akaar resolved to begin his rebellion—by fixing his moral compass on what he knew was right and letting his conscience be his guide.
• • •
Hearing the brig’s door open, Bashir found himself hoping, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, that Dax had come back. He hid his mild disappointment when Doctor Simon Tarses turned the corner and stood facing him through his cell’s invisible force field.
The younger man was a few inches shorter than Bashir and slight of build. A medical satchel was slung at his left hip and a medical tricorder occupied the pocket on the side of his right thigh. The years since he and Bashir had served together on the old Deep Space 9 had been kind to the quarter-Romulan physician; his dark hair was now distinguished by a few gray hairs at his temples and subtle creases lived at the edges of his smile, but otherwise he remained gallingly youthful.
He greeted Bashir with a genial nod. “Hello, Julian.”
Bashir rolled off his bunk and stood. “Simon. What can I do for you?”
Tarses patted his satchel. “Just need to give you a quick exam. For the record.”
“Ah, yes. The standard evaluation for new prisoners. Proceed.”
The young chief medical officer powered up his tricorder and took out its small, cylinder-shaped metallic scanning device, which he aimed at Bashir. “How are you feeling?”
“About as well as can be expected.”
“That badly, eh? I’ve heard a lot of gossip about you in the last day.”
“Such as?”
Tarses shrugged. “Some people are calling you a traitor.”
Bashir searched his old friend’s eyes for some hint of his true feelings. “And what are you calling me?”
“At the moment? My patient.” He trained the sensor on Bashir’s midsection. “Any discomfort or lingering physical pains? Any reason to suspect you suffered blunt-force trauma when your ship got caught in the crossfire?”
A weary sigh signaled Bashir’s waning patience. “I feel fine, Simon.”
“Just doing my job, Julian. Bear with me.” He glanced up from his tricorder and cast a sly look at Bashir. “Mind if I ask you a non-medical question?”
“If you like.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Bashir hesitated to answer. Was this some sort of trap? Some ruse to elicit a confession that would soon be used against him? He didn’t think that Simon Tarses was the sort of person who would collude in such a betrayal, but then he hadn’t served with him in nearly five years. People could change a great deal in far less time than that, as Bashir had learned with Ezri Dax. For the moment, he chose to err on the side of self-preservation. “Why did I do what?”
“What do you think? Steal classified data. Hijack a runabout. Throw away your career.”
“I didn’t steal the classified data.” Technically, that was true; one or more agents of Section 31 had stolen the data. It was merely a convenient omission on his part that he failed to reveal he had solicited the crime. He continued, “I only used it.”
Tarses switched off the small scanner and put it away. “You know what? I’m not a lawyer. I don’t care about the semantics of what you did or didn’t do. If it makes you more comfortable, we can speak hypothetically. If you stole classified data and used it to cook up a cure for the Andorian fertility problem, what would be your rationale for throwing away your career and risking life in prison?”
“Simply this: It’s the right thing to do.”
An understanding nod. “Somehow, I knew that’s what you’d say.” He adjusted the settings on his tricorder and looked down at its display as he continued. “Did you hear we have Shar in custody?”
Bashir’s cool façade vanished, and he barely stopped himself from lunging forward into the force field. “When? How?”
“He used a Starfleet emergency beacon on a tricorder to get himself beamed out of a jam on the planet’s surface. Apparently, he seized control of the planet’s broadcast networks to plead your case to the people. And I think it worked. They stormed the capital, and something happened to shift the balance of power in the parliament. Just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“Andor has a new government. How do you like that?”
“Not a bad day’s work. . . . So, Shar’s on the Aventine right now?”
Tarses tilted his head. “Yup. Just a few cells over. Next to your pal Captain Harris.” He paused to study something on the tricorder, then he switched it off and slung it back by his hip. “So, you developed the cure as a benign retrovirus and injected it into your bloodstream, eh?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“So the cure isn’t something you can just dump onto an isolinear chip. You’re the cure. You’re the package that has to be delivered to Andor.”
An embarrassed shrug. “That was the plan. Alas, it seems to have hit a snag.”
“Prepare to be un-snagged.” He tapped his combadge. “Tarses to sh’Pash. Ready.”
As the brig’s outer door opened, Tarses tapped the control pad beside Bashir’s cell and lowered the force field. Moments later, an attractive young Andorian shen wearing a gold-trimmed Starfleet uniform and carrying a Type-II phaser rounded the corner, followed by Shar and Captain Harris. The chan nodded at Bashir, who nodded back.
Sh’Pash handed Bashir a combadge as he stepped out of his cell and regarded Tarses with new admiration. “Simon, you know they’ll crucify you for this.”
Tarses grasped Bashir’s shoulder. “If you succeed, it’ll be worth it.”
The shen gestured toward the exit. “Doctors? Are you ready to go?”
Tarses started walking. “Let’s go.”
Bashir followed with pleasure. “I thought you’d never ask.”
• • •
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
Dax sat at her dining table and looked up at Bowers, who stood outside her quarters, leaning his head through the open doorway. She beckoned him. “Come in.”
He crossed the room to stand in front of her. She pushed an empty glass across the table to him, then nodded at the bottle of Aldebaran whiskey between them. “Fill up and sit down.”
Bowers poured himself a generous double shot of the amber liquor and lifted the glass to his nose for an appreciative sniff. “The good stuff.” A small sip led to a deeper taste, and he settled into the chair opposite Dax’s. “What’s the occasion?”
“My annual crisis of conscience.” She downed another swig of the floral, caramel-scented alcohol and savored its oaky aftertaste and soothing warmth. “Did you ever find yourself taking a stand for something you didn’t really believe? Just because you had to?”
The XO shrugged. “I’ve certainly had to defend decisions other people made that I didn’t agree with. But that’s part of wearing a uniform.”
“So I keep telling myself.” She drummed her fi
ngers on the tabletop a few times. “Like when you were telling me what a stupid idea the embargo was. Or how ineffectual and pointless the blockade would be. I knew you were right, but I had no choice but to argue against you.”
He cast his eyes down again, into his drink. “We all have our orders.”
“Yes, we do. But when did I start following mine so blindly? I used to have a mind of my own. At least, I thought I did. Was I only imagining that?”
Bowers shook his head. “No. During the Borg invasion, you were downright roguish.”
“I was, right?” She quaffed another half-mouthful; this time her lips puckered at the whiskey’s sour notes. “At some point I started living by the book instead of my conscience.”
“Can we drop the ranks for a second?”
“Absolutely. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I need a friend right now way more than I need a first officer.”
He put down his drink. “Speaking as your friend, Ezri, I’m wondering what has you all spun up like this. Was it your talk with Bashir?”
Dax nodded. “I heard everything he said, and inside my head, I agreed with him. Everything he’s doing, and his reasons for doing it—they all made perfect sense to me. But every word out of my mouth was an argument. It was like I couldn’t bring myself to agree with him. Like I’d spent so long arguing with him over the past few years that even now, with all that behind us, I fell back into the same old pattern of opposing any idea he supports.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, can you be more specific?”
She took another sip of whiskey to calm her ragged nerves. “We have orders to recover and suppress all the Meta-Genome Data, including whatever part of it might be included in the cure Julian says he created. But what if Julian’s right? What if the value of that information lies in our ability to share it instead of our ability to hide it?” She put her drink down, then pushed it aside. “I mean, isn’t ensuring the survival of the Andorian people more important than trying to shove a hundred-year-old secret back inside a box?”
“I certainly think so. Apparently, so does Julian.”
“So why do I sit here telling myself lies?” She got up and paced toward sloped ports that lined one side of her quarters and looked out on the northern hemisphere of Andor. “Why do I defend the inexcusable policies of a politician whose beliefs I despise?”
Bowers peered ruefully into his drink. “Because you swore an oath, just as I did—and so did every other officer of Starfleet.”
“But Ishan is so clearly in the wrong, Sam. He’s smug, and conniving, and something about him just rubs me the wrong way. I wish I could explain it better than that.”
“No, I think that sums up the little weasel perfectly.”
Dax looked back at Bowers. “Thanks.” She returned to the table. “Here’s the thing, Sam. Julian told me that he’s hiding the cure for the Andorians in his own bloodstream. He doesn’t even need to go to Andor to deliver it. We could have Simon draw some blood from him, and then we could beam it down to Shar’s associates with instructions from Julian on how to extract it and mass-produce it.”
“Except that we’re under orders not to let the Andorians acquire the cure.”
“Precisely. And that’s the order that sticks in my craw. The Andorians are teetering on the edge of extinction. Their future as a species is at stake. And we’re sitting on the cure because . . . why? Some ill-defined fear about ‘national security’? We hold their fate in our hands, Sam. Don’t we have a higher duty, not just as Starfleet officers but as sentient beings, to act out of compassion rather than blind obedience? If we deny them the cure, and they pass the tipping point, won’t that make us guilty of genocide? That’s not something I want to live with.”
Bowers put down his glass. “You could obey your conscience instead of Starfleet and the president pro tem, but that path comes with consequences.”
“I know. And so did Julian, but it didn’t stop him from doing the right thing.” She moved to stand at Bowers’s side and looked him in the eye. “What do you think I should do?”
He looked at the table. “Whatever your conscience tells you.”
“Don’t duck the question, Sam. I’m looking for an honest opinion, here. And I’m asking you as a friend, not as my XO, and not as an officer. We’re just two people talking here.”
He lifted his eyes to meet hers. “No, we’re not. I’m your first officer, and you’re my captain. Where you lead, I follow. You tell me what you want to accomplish, and I’ll make it happen, come hell or high water. So, you tell me, Captain: What’s the mission?”
His profession of loyalty caught her so by surprise that for a moment she was speechless. After a deep breath, she gathered her courage and settled her mind upon a course of action.
Then the whooping cry of a Red Alert echoed through the ship, and Lieutenant Kedair’s voice resounded over the intraship PA system.
“Attention, all decks! Three prisoners have escaped the brig: civilian Emerson Harris and former Starfleet officers Thirishar ch’Thane and Julian Bashir. Report to General Quarters and secure all decks. If you spot the prisoners, alert your deck officer. Bridge out.”
Dax sighed and shot a glum look at Bowers as they walked together toward the door to the corridor. “Looks like someone just made my decision for me.”
• • •
Sprinting for their lives, Bashir followed Shar, Harris, and Tarses inside the transporter room. Lieutenant sh’Pash stood beside the open doorway; with one hand she waved them through like an Academy drill instructor herding cadets through an obstacle course, while with her other hand she swiveled a phaser back and forth, covering both sides of the corridor.
Just before she darted inside, she fired a few shots in either direction, then she locked the door and melted its control pad with a single blast of her weapon. “We have company,” sh’Pash said as Tarses crossed to the transporter console.
“Shar, Doctor, Captain, get on the pad,” Tarses snapped. “You, too, Thyla.”
Before Bashir could ask what would happen to Tarses, the other surgeon’s Andorian partner in crime herded Shar and the two human men onto the transporter platform. “Quickly.” As soon as the four of them stepped onto the elevated platform, its energizer coils hummed to life, and Bashir felt a galvanic tingling travel over his body from crown to toe.
Tarses looked up from the controls at sh’Pash. “You preset the coordinates?”
“It’s good to go,” the shen replied. “Energize!”
The young doctor passed his hands over the console’s touchscreen interface, and a white embrace of light and sound washed away the details of the room just as the whine of phaser fire began to howl at its door—
—and the glow faded to reveal the interior of the Aventine’s main shuttlebay, where the battered hulk of the Parham stood with its starboard hatch open and gangplank extended.
Two security officers leveled phasers in the trio’s direction, but sh’Pash fired first and stunned her two shipmates with unnervingly precise marksmanship. She waved Shar, Bashir, and Harris toward the Parham. “Into the ship!”
Harris and Shar ran for the freighter’s gangplank, but Bashir grabbed sh’Pash by her sleeve and spun her around to face him. “Why didn’t we beam to the planet?”
The Andorian yanked her arm free. “We’re running with shields up! Intraship beaming was the best I could do. Now go! I’ll get to the control room and open the bay doors.”
She didn’t wait for him to agree or thank her, she just sprinted away, focused on the next step of her mission to set Bashir and his cohorts free.
Bashir took off at a full run and chased Harris and Shar up the gangplank into the Parham. As he crossed the threshold a step behind Shar, Harris shouted over his shoulder, “Retract the plank and seal the hatch!” Shar turned back and helped Bashir carry out Harris’s orders, and then the two former Starfleet officers hurried forward into the Parham’s cockpit.
Outside the forward vi
ewport a narrow strip of stars appeared and then rapidly widened as the Aventine’s shuttlebay doors glided apart. Harris punched in commands on the master console, fired up the freighter’s damaged impulse engine, and nudged his ship into motion.
As soon as they cleared the shuttlebay’s force field, phaser blasts lanced through the darkness on all sides of the little ship, rocking it like a dinghy trapped in a tempest. As Harris steered a wild path through the fiery mayhem, he flashed a devil-may-care grin over his shoulder at his passengers. “Grab somethin’ heavy, gents. I get the feelin’ we’re in for a rough ride.”
• • •
A manic atmosphere reigned on the bridge of the Aventine as Dax rushed from the turbolift with Bowers close at her back. On the main viewscreen was an image of the Parham diving toward Andor. Dax hurried into her command chair as she called out to Kedair, “Tactical, report!”
“The Parham has left the shuttlebay and is making a run for the surface.”
Bowers kept his eyes on the screen as he ordered, “Tractor beam! Now!”
The security chief keyed in the command, only to be met by an unhappy feedback tone. “Malfunction, Captain. Tractor beam emitter levels are at less than four percent power.”
“Helm, maintain pursuit course, keep us in range. Mirren, how long to restore tractor beam power?”
The operations manager swiveled around from her panel, her expression urgent. “Sir, someone sabotaged the tractor beam’s main plasma relay.”
Dax nodded. “Probably the same someone who broke our prisoners out of the brig and helped the Parham leave the shuttlebay.”
Bowers reviewed the latest update on his console. “Captain, a security team just arrested Lieutenant sh’Pash and Doctor Tarses for aiding and abetting the prisoners’ escape.”
Just when I thought this day couldn’t get much worse.
From the tactical station, Kedair asked, “Should I arm phasers, Captain?”
“Negative. That ship’s too badly damaged. One shot could vaporize her.”
Kedair moved her hand away from the phaser controls. “Aye, sir.”
