by David Mack
Ikerson found himself baffled. “I assumed it missed the signs.”
“Far from it. Uraei let Terra Prime hit Starfleet Command because that was the target with the best chance of surviving a seizure. And thanks to Captain Archer and his crew, Uraei was proved correct.” She lowered her voice. “What you might not know is that Uraei prevented three other attacks by Terra Prime that day: two were bombings meant to shatter the atmospheric domes over Tycho City and Utopia Planitia, and the third would have been a mass slaughter right here, on the floor of the United Earth Parliament.”
“Those I know about,” Ikerson admitted. “I also know that Uraei dealt with them by sending its agents to murder the Terra Prime cells instead of letting the proper authorities take them into custody.”
Rao shook her head. “How could we have arrested them? They hadn’t done anything yet, and they were smart enough not to put their plans in writing. If not for Uraei, we wouldn’t have even known what they meant to do.” Her mien hardened. “There was no other way.”
“I can’t accept that, Admiral. Just as I can’t accept Uraei’s devaluation of currencies to lure some of our so-called allies into this Coalition, its manipulations of commodities to pressure other worlds into accepting it, or its censorship of research that suspects someone of rigging of the Interplanetary Futures Index. Mars would consider that grounds for war.”
The admiral jabbed an index finger against Ikerson’s chest. “If you want to keep drawing breath, Professor, I’d recommend you never mention any of that ever again.”
“Sorry. I forgot you had it classified as ‘top secret.’ My mistake.”
“You think this is a joke, Ikerson? We all need to be on the same side here. The latest predictive models from Uraei suggest we could be at war with Romulus in less than a year.”
He couldn’t suppress a bitter huff of derision. “Are you really that blind, Admiral? Uraei isn’t predicting a war with Romulus. It’s creating one. Orchestrating it, cultivating it, as just another step in some master plan being executed on a time scale too deep for us to perceive.”
A dubious lift of one eyebrow conveyed Rao’s disdain. “You can prove this?”
“No, of course not.”
“I suggest you keep it that way.” Rao emptied her glass and retreated up the stairs. “Enjoy the party, Professor. Assuming you even know how.”
Twenty-one
A chill of suspicion assailed Caliq Azura’s telepathic senses the moment she set foot inside Ambassador Lagan’s office. The older Bajoran woman’s reaction to Azura—whose Betazoid heritage was betrayed by her eyes’ solid-black irises—was sharper than the pricks of mere curiosity, more hostile than the inward-turning tendrils of fear.
Azura was ready to chalk up Lagan Serra’s distrust to a racist prejudice against her psionically gifted species. Then, as they shook hands and greeted each other, she sifted through Lagan’s surface thoughts and caught fragments of a buried memory summoned by her arrival.
“Ambassador Lagan. Thank you for seeing me on short notice.”
A polite nod. “Anything for the Federation Security Agency.” Lagan cracked a smile rendered false by the deadness around her dark-gray eyes. ~Just like the ones who confronted me on Tezwa.~ “Though I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which division you’re with, Ms. Cartha.”
“Fugitive Recovery,” Azura lied. She released Lagan’s hand but kept her senses attuned to the thoughts behind the ambassador’s words. She already suspects I’m using an alias.
Lagan briefly narrowed her gaze. Her face was etched with the lines of old tragedies and hard-earned wisdom. “Interesting.” She moved behind her desk, settled into her executive chair, and motioned for Azura to sit. Lagan tried to adopt a casual air as Azura took her seat and set her padd on the edge of the desk, but the Bajoran’s anxiety clouded the thoughtspace between her and Azura. ~Part of the same cabal that ousted Zife and his people. Have to watch this one.~ “So what brings you to Cardassia Prime? Isn’t this a bit outside the FSA’s jurisdiction?”
She suspects I belong to the organization. She’s better informed than I was led to believe. “We can’t act here without sanction from the local authorities. But our treaty with the Cardassian Union allows us to seek permission through proper channels.” Azura crossed her legs, affecting a prim pose that masked her nature as a trained killer and intelligence operative. “In other words, Madam Ambassador—through you.”
Alarm and antipathy became a cacophony inside Lagan’s mind, but her expression remained neutral, untroubled. Confronted by anyone other than a telepath, she would be a formidable adversary—in both games of chance and matters of state. She feigned a lack of interest in the matter. “Such matters can be handled by my subordinates, Ms. Cartha.”
“Under normal circumstances I would agree, Your Excellency. But the fugitives I’ve come to recover require special care.” She picked up her padd, switched it on, and handed it to Lagan. “As you can see, the agency has credible intel that Doctor Julian Bashir and Agent Sarina Douglas are currently being harbored here on Cardassia Prime—by none other than Castellan Garak. Making this a diplomatic crisis of the most delicate kind.”
On the surface Lagan was the epitome of stoicism, but behind that façade raged a storm of conflicting emotions. It was hard for Azura to distinguish the constituent emotions mingled in the ambassador’s psyche: sympathy and admiration for Bashir, respect for Castellan Garak, fear and loathing for Azura and the organization she truly served. Even before Lagan spoke, Azura felt the woman’s mind resolve itself into a stance of resistance. “I have no intention of accusing Castellan Garak of harboring fugitive criminals, no matter what evidence you think you have.” ~No way I’ll surrender anyone to the likes of her. Not after what happened to Zife.~
“No one wants you to accuse a head of state, Madam Ambassador. In fact, we’d prefer this be handled with greater discretion. The kind befitting a diplomat of your experience.”
“Be that as it may, you’re still asking me to confront Castellan Garak about the arrest of a man who, I’m given to understand, has been his friend for nearly twenty years.”
Azura shrugged. “Think of it as a supplication rather than a confrontation.”
Lagan reclined and scrutinized Azura. “I doubt I’ll think of it at all—until this request arrives through proper channels. Only two people have the authority to ask me to communicate with Cardassia’s head of state: President zh’Tarash and her secretary of the exterior. Neither of whom appears to have signed off on this.” She radiated defiance. She pushed the padd back across the desk to Azura. “Do they even know you’re here? Does anyone from the Federation Council know about this?”
Azura had expected this abrupt turn. The ambassador’s dossier had suggested she would push back if she perceived herself to be bullied or coerced. It was a predictable mindset for a woman whose formative years had been spent as a resistance fighter on Cardassian-occupied Bajor. Decades of guerilla warfare and covert insurgency had tempered Lagan like a fine sword, leaving her strong, sharp, and flexible. And the five years she had spent untangling a Gordian knot of ethnic conflicts on the neutral planet Tezwa, following the debacle spawned by former Federation President Min Zife and his lackeys, had only honed her edge. In her life, this woman had survived being shot, stabbed, poisoned, and attacked with improvised explosives. If ever a diplomat had earned her steady, regal bearing, it was Lagan Serra.
It was almost enough to make Azura regret what she had to do.
She made eye contact with Lagan and took command of her mind.
Peering into the abyss of Lagan’s buried memories, Azura plumbed the mental shadows for the telltale colors of shame. A person’s most hideous secrets were always the easiest ones to find. In most people, memories of disgust and regret were among the most vivid.
“When you were fourteen, fighting with the Kolum cell outside Elemspar�
�”
“Please.” Lagan flinched and shrank in her chair. “Stop.”
“You watched the cell leader rape your younger sister, and you did nothing to stop him, because you were scared. Three years later, you tried to avenge your sister by killing that man—but you failed. Your shot struck and killed an innocent woman instead.”
The ambassador reached for her desk’s panic switch, but Azura froze Lagan in place with an override of her voluntary muscles and nervous system.
Lagan forced words through her clenched jaw. “Get . . . out . . . of my . . . head!”
“You blame yourself for what happened to President Zife. You know you were part of a conspiracy. A plot to unseat the Federation’s elected leader. You thought it was for the greater good. But now you see yourself as an accomplice to a coup d’etat.”
Tears of anger rolled down the Bajoran’s face. “Please . . . stop.”
Azura stood and loomed over the ambassador. “You regret your decision to forgo having children in order to advance your career. You’re secretly glad to be free of Tezwa and its regressive savages—but as much as you love the pride that comes with serving as the Federation’s ambassador to Cardassia, some part of you still wants to point a disruptor at every Cardassian you see. You spent the first twenty years of your life either fantasizing about killing them or actually doing it—and now it’s a reflex, one you have to fight against every day.” Azura felt the Bajoran’s steely resolve degenerate into hollow despair. She smirked down at her. “Shall I go on, Madam Ambassador? Or have I made my point clear?”
“What do you want me to do?”
She nudged the padd back across the desk. “Sign this official request for the extradition of Doctor Bashir and Agent Douglas, then transmit it to Castellan Garak on a secure channel.”
Lagan scribbled her imprimatur on the padd, then keyed in her command code to send it to Garak via the embassy’s priority channel. “There. It’s done.”
“My thanks, Your Excellency.” She reached inside Lagan’s mind and telepathically planted a memory block that would render her unable to recall the details of Azura’s face, even with the benefit of other psionic assistance. Then she picked up her padd. “Naturally, I trust you’ll exercise discretion by not mentioning our meeting to anyone.” Heading for the door, she added, “It would be a terrible shame if I had to pay you another visit.”
• • •
Rose-tinted rays of dusk slanted through the windows of Bashir’s guest suite, bathing him and his comrades-in-exile with painterly light. He considered Sarina’s proposal and shook his head. “That has to be the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Sarina refused to back down. “Really, Julian? The worst?”
Before he could answer, Ozla Graniv said, “Maybe not the all-time worst idea, but it damned well isn’t a good one.”
Bashir looked at Data and Lal, hoping to find allies. “What do you think?”
Father and daughter shared a brief look. Lal turned her eyes toward the floor, so Data answered. “We would prefer to reserve judgment until more facts are available.”
A frown from Sarina. “Not helpful.” She fixed Bashir with a look. “If you’ve got a better idea, Julian, now’s the time to share it.”
“A better idea than traveling through the Bajoran wormhole and finding a place to hide in the Gamma Quadrant? I could start with flying a runabout into a star, or shooting a hole through my frontal lobe with a phaser set to kill.”
She was growing frustrated with him. “Don’t be so dramatic. It makes sense. The Dominion has aggressively resisted trade with the Federation and its allies, so there’s little to no tech infected with Uraei’s code on that side of the wormhole. And as big as the Dominion is, there are still plenty of uninhabited, uncharted Class-M planets we could settle on.”
Graniv’s mood soured further. “And what then? Spend our lives fishing and sunning ourselves on a beach while sipping drinks from a solar-powered replicator?”
Sarina nodded. “Sounds pretty good to me.”
“Ah, yes,” Bashir said, “a permanent vacation. What a lovely idea. All except for the part where we abandon hundreds of billions of innocent lives to the control of an artificial superintelligence we already know to be morally compromised and endlessly vindictive.”
His retort turned Sarina contemplative for a few seconds. “What if I let you be in charge of programming the replicator’s drink and snack menu?”
“Well, that’s different. I’d have to reconsider the whole plan.”
Graniv headed for the suite’s kitchen nook and grumbled under her breath, “Whole damn galaxy’s on the brink, and I’m stuck with two androids who can’t make up their minds and two geniuses fighting over a drink menu.”
Bashir considered trying to explain to Graniv that gallows humor was just one of many coping mechanisms he and Sarina had cultivated in recent years in response to the traumas and tribulations of their fight against Section 31.
Then the suite’s front door opened, and Garak entered in a hurry, eyes wide with anxiety. “Good, you’re all here. I have important news.” He paused until Graniv returned from the kitchen nook. “Minutes ago, my office received an official communiqué from the Federation Embassy here in the capital. It seems Ambassador Lagan has filed a formal request for the extradition of Doctor Bashir and Ms. Douglas.”
Confusion knitted Graniv’s brow. “How would the Federation even know we’re here?”
“Thirty-one,” Bashir said.
The Trill remained perplexed. “No, that makes no sense. If we get taken into official Federation custody, then any move they make against us would become public.”
“Quite an astute observation,” Garak said. “However, Ms. Graniv, you seem to have overlooked a more sinister possibility—that the request for your extradition came from Thirty-one itself.” He looked at Bashir and Sarina. “I had my doubts, so I asked my own ambassador on Earth to confirm it with the Palais de la Concorde. Imagine my surprise when I learned that no one in the office of the Federation president knows anything about this official request.”
A palpable dread filled the room. Bashir’s throat tightened. “If Thirty-one knows we’re here, they’re already coming for us.”
“Almost certainly,” Garak said. “And with great haste, if they remain true to form.”
Graniv’s face blanched, heightening the contrast between her fair skin and her species’ trademark trails of dark brown dermal spots. “What do we do now?”
“File formal requests for asylum on Cardassia Prime.” Garak lifted his hand to forestall the protest already forming on Sarina’s lips. “Only as a feint. A misdirection to buy you some time and give me a pretext for increasing the security here at the residence.”
Bashir nodded. “Yes, it’s all we can do. How long do you think we have?”
“If I were to make an educated guess? An hour at most. My advice to you, one and all, would be pack quickly, and travel light.”
• • •
“I’ve flushed out our quarry,” Caliq Azura boasted. “They’ve requested asylum on Cardassia Prime, and Castellan Garak has increased the security at his residential complex, as I expected.”
Control sounded irked, as ever. “Your orders were to contain the targets.”
“Which is exactly what I’ve done.”
“Containment would have entailed denying them access to a working starship. You should have focused on sabotaging their transport vessel, Archeus.”
“What would be the point? They’ve asked for sanctuary. They’ve nowhere else to go, and now they’re digging in.” Though she had been a director in the organization for only a few years, Azura had long since tired of interacting with Control only via encrypted subspace holograms. She longed to be anywhere in proximity to the mysterious leader, even if only once, to see if her Betazoid talents could glim
pse the person behind the silhouette.
A note of pity crept into her superior’s voice. “Their petition for asylum is an empty gesture, Azura. A classic delaying tactic of the Obsidian Order. Most likely, the castellan himself suggested it to Bashir and the others.” A pause freighted with disappointment. “Unless we move now, they’ll soon be on the run again. And their next port of call might not be one we monitor.”
“I know a mechanic at the complex. We could disable their ship’s warp drive if—”
“It’s too late for that. By now the android Data has initiated preflight checks and begun prepping the vessel for departure. Sabotage of Archeus is no longer a viable tactic.”
Azura sensed she wasn’t going to like whatever Control had in mind for her next move. “How, then, should I respond? Put together a strike team and kick in Garak’s door?”
“Don’t be absurd, Director Azura. Your brazen theatrics have already made a simple extraction into a fiasco. There’s no reason to turn this into an interstellar incident.”
She swallowed her anger and reminded herself to focus on the mission above all else. “So, no official assets, then?”
“Correct. Local cutouts only. Fortunately, we have some inside the complex already.”
“Outsourcing this op might be a mistake. Especially if we want Bashir alive.”
“Alive does not mean unharmed. The only reason not to kill Bashir or his companions on Cardassia Prime is to avoid an official murder investigation. If the targets should expire in our custody after they’ve been extracted from the surface, so be it.”
It was dangerous to oppose Control’s directives, but Azura knew she was the one who stood to be blamed if the operation went sour. “At least let my people provide tech support for the locals, just to coordinate the—”
“No. Cardassia Prime isn’t a secure theater of operations for us. We can’t allow any of our personnel or equipment to be captured and analyzed by the local authorities. Not until we’ve had a chance to put preemptive measures in place.” Control’s ominous silhouette swelled to surround Azura even as it faded and the leader’s disguised voice echoed around her. “All the pieces are in place, Azura. Set them in motion and finish this.”
