O’Donnel was at her shoulder as the three of them moved down the corridor, the lighting dim on its standby setting. Ezri sensed the engineer’s eyes boring into her back. It would take a lot more to win Shannon’s trust than just some impassioned words, she realized, but for now there were more important things to concern herself with.
Christopher halted by an atmospheric processing panel. “Here we are,” he said. Dax hesitated. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but slowly she became aware that the cable trunking in this section bypassed the control module completely. The panel wasn’t connected to anything except a tertiary power supply.
“Shaun, are you sure about this?” O’Donnel asked pointedly.
The captain nodded. “I guess I am.” He adjusted two control dials at the same time, and the panel gave off a deep thudding noise. Magnetic locks, Dax realized.
With effort, Christopher pushed the dummy panel and it slid away on concealed runners to reveal a hidden compartment, hardly bigger than the ’fresher cubicle in Ezri’s cabin.
Inside was a steel rack of dark bricks made from dense, non-reflective plastic, each one held in a vibration-damping armature, each one connected by cables to a stand-alone computer console. The air inside the chamber was cool and dry, and smelled faintly of ozone. “This is it,” said the captain. “This is the truth.”
Julian advanced toward Rain. The woman trembled, but she held her ground. On one level, he felt a fleeting glimmer of respect for that. Others would have backed away, turned, and run, but Robinson showed courage. She was afraid, but she still faced him.
Her eyes. Bashir was drawn to them, just as he had been the first time he had seen her aboard Botany Bay. He searched her gaze, the motion of the muscles of her face, trying to find any tic, any sense of a lie. Julian’s teeth set on edge as he found nothing, and in annoyance his hand shot out and grabbed her chin, holding her in place.
“You’re hurting me!” she grated, struggling against his grip. “Let go!”
He brought himself down to her level, their faces less than an inch apart. “You are lying,” he growled. “Admit it! Tell me you are lying!”
“I…will not…” She bit out the retort.
“You are lying!” he bellowed, an edge of wild desperation entering his tone. He wanted it to be a lie, he wanted to know that Rain was some sort of spy just as the optio had suspected, but the truth was there, written across the girl’s face like words on a page. He knew for certain that Rain Robinson believed everything she had told him. She believed that the First Khan was a tyrant and a killer, and she blamed Noonien Singh for ruining her world. Everything she said flew in the face of the Khanate’s historical record, of the imperial mandates and doctrine that had been a part of Julian’s life since he first left his gene-crèche.
But what disturbed him even more than that was the sense of real uncertainty inside him. He thought of Ezri, of their conversation about the prisoners, and the words of the holographic counsel. Doubts coiled in his thoughts, and he released the woman, stepping away.
Rain staggered backward and gave a strangled cough. “You’re just like him,” she spat, “all that silky manner, all the playacting at being a civilized man, but underneath you’re nothing but a thug. A bully.”
“I am a son of the Khan,” he replied, but the words seemed shaky. “A proud legacy, the pinnacle of mankind’s prowess, the ultimate in genetic enhancement!” Bashir pointed at her. “Far superior to the rudimentary, mundane strain of humanity that you represent!”
She massaged her bruised neck. “You may be stronger and faster and smarter, but you’re not better, not by a long shot.” Color returned to her cheeks. “While Khan was busy tinkering with you in his test tubes, he lost something along the way! He cut out whatever it is that makes you human!”
“You’re a Basic, a woman out of time! How could you possibly understand what I am?” Bashir threw his hands wide. “You lived your life in the cradle of a single planet! You don’t know what it is like out here in the dark, every species we come across challenging us for territory and resources, every world a new hazard. We must be strong and ruthless to endure!”
“That’s Khan Noonien Singh talking,” she snapped back. “Those are the words of a man with nothing but arrogance! Someone who had to control, to kill! A man who lived for war instead of peace!”
He sneered at her. “And what kind of galaxy would you have us live in, then? What would humanity be if we were not augmented, if we were forced to evolve at nature’s slow pace? Answer me that!” Bashir looked down at his hands, at the slender, powerful fingers that could have crushed Robinson’s windpipe in a heartbeat. “What would I be if I were not princeps?” Julian glared at Rain. “If we were all still like you, mankind would be extinct, or at the very best struggling to survive in a hostile universe. But the path laid down for us by the Khan has made us masters of all that we survey!”
The woman seemed so very small, so very fragile, as she looked up at him with those stark, honest eyes. “But at what cost?” she asked him.
Bashir opened his mouth to speak, but found that he could not answer her.
“How much is in here?” asked the alien.
“All of it.” Shannon answered the question before Shaun could reply. “Each core contains terabytes of super-compressed information. It’s everything we could assemble before we left. Hours of high-definition video, digital audio recordings, still photos, millions of pages of text.”
“We hid this bulkhead and retrofitted the compartment into the spaceframe during the final phases of the ship’s construction.” Christopher gave a solemn nod. “Barely a dozen people knew it was here. We were afraid we’d been infiltrated, you see? If any of Khan’s agents had learned about this, they’d have hit us before the ships were even finished.” He sighed. “Even so, it was only us who got away, in the end.” The Botany Bay’s captain tapped one of the dark blocks. “A complete history of the Eugenics Wars, from stolen copies of the first research of Project Chrysalis, right through to the fall of Europe and the razing of Japan. An accounting of the war crimes of Khan Noonien Singh and his kindred, gathered for all to see. Every execution, every death list, every casualty count, every atrocity. The stark and brutal truth. We call them the Black Files.”
Dax glanced at her and produced the small handheld device O’Donnel had seen her use before. The thing appeared to be some kind of cross between a personal data assistant and a sensor package. “I have an interface program already prepared,” she told them. “With your permission, I want to copy everything you have.” She showed Christopher a thin, translucent stick of plastic.
“A memory stick?” he asked.
“An isolinear chip,” she corrected. “I can get it all on here.”
“Then go ahead,” Shaun said, nodding.
Dax set up the hand computer and Shannon watched her. After a moment, the elfin girl turned and looked her in the eye. “You have something to say to me?”
“A lot of people died for the data inside those modules,” she began, unsure of where her words would take her. “I want you to know that. To know how much it cost us to gather and hoard it…and then to take it and run.” O’Donnel felt weary. “We didn’t know what we would find on Eta Cassiopeiae. We truly believed that Singh and the others would rip the world apart, that humanity on Earth wouldn’t live beyond the twenty-first century. We wanted to make sure that if we survived to start again somewhere else, then our descendants would know the reason why we fled.”
The alien nodded gently. “I understand. Believe me, I know exactly how precious this information is…” She hesitated, sighing. “In fact, it is you who do not realize the importance now. Before, the things in these files could touch the fate of Earth only, a single world. Now, hundreds of years later, what is contained inside them has the power to tip the balance across a quarter of the galaxy.”
“What do you mean?” said Shannon.
“There is a resistance out h
ere,” Dax told her. “People from dozens of planets, some of us fighters, others contacts or spies, like me. We have been trying to strike back at the Khanate for decades, but the pockets of opposition are isolated and scattered. The ubers…the humans are very good at keeping us cordoned off from one another.”
Christopher nodded. “Divide and conquer. They prevent you from joining up, stop you sharing intel and resources. That’s textbook tyranny. It’s easier to deal with a dozen tiny factions than one single powerful enemy.”
“There are people out there who would help us if only they thought they stood a chance. If they could be convinced they had a reason.” Dax tapped a control on her device. “And thanks to you, now we have the means. Indisputable proof of Khan Noonien Singh’s bloody past and living witnesses who were there. This will open up the whole rotten heart of the Khanate for everyone to see.” She nodded to herself. “With this, we can tear down the myth of the benevolent liberator and show him as the despot he always was.”
On the monitor screen, Shannon saw a blur of images flicker past as the data was copied at a lightning-fast rate, pictures barely registering in her brain in blinks of color and shade: a building on fire, a DNA helix, a horde of refugees…“What are you going to do with it?”
“The resistance has deep-cover operatives on a world called Bynaus, people who can get me access to the interstellar subspace communications network.” Dax’s portable computer chimed, indicating that the data transfer was complete, and she picked it up. “I am going to set this information free. It will sow the seeds of dissent on every world of the Khanate, trigger insurrections and open rebellion.”
Shannon felt a cold smile tug at the corner of her mouth. Her fiancé, Hank Janeway, had been on board the Savannah. His death was still raw and painful; from O’Donnel’s standpoint, he had only been gone for a matter of weeks, and even that had not been enough to satisfy Khan. She fought to keep the grief locked down tight, but the dictator was reaching out from the grave to attack them again. The thought that she could strike back at Noonien Singh filled her with grim purpose. Shannon nodded to Dax. “How do we help you make that happen?”
Bashir finally broke eye contact with Rain and turned away, glaring at the walls of the holodeck. “I am finished with you,” he said in a low voice. “You are dismissed.”
“Dismissed?” she repeated. “I’m not one of your crew or your—what did you call them? Helots? You can’t order me around! I’m a United States citizen!”
“That nation-state hasn’t existed since 2102,” he told her. “You have no rights, no country, nothing unless I grant it to you…” Bashir waved her away. “Now get out. Leave me.”
“Where am I going to go—” she began, but he rounded on her and roared.
“Get out!”
Fear flashed in her eyes, and she backed away toward the arch, the doors automatically opening. She stumbled into the grip of a waiting trooper, who threw the princeps a questioning look.
“Take her away,” he ordered, and the doors slid shut on Rain’s panic.
Alone in the silence, Bashir stood and tried to make sense of the churning maelstrom of emotion in his thoughts. Julian could not easily dismiss the look of horror and accusation he had seen on Rain’s face, the unshakable certainty that the woman had no doubts about her hatred of the Khan. The things she had said…They tore at the very fabric of Bashir’s reason. They ate like acid into the core of everything he held to be true. For a moment, he thought of the old mythologies of Earth, of the backward religious beliefs that had been rife before the Great Ascension had done away with such factionalism. Was this how it felt to have one’s faith challenged?
The sudden, terrible thought that Julian Bashir might be found wanting filled him with a powerful sense of dread. He tried to wave the moment away, striking distractedly at the air as if he were dealing with a nagging insect.
In the next moment his communicator chimed from the pocket where he had placed it. “Computer, communications tie-in,” he said aloud. “Relay.”
There was an answering beep from the air, and Jacob Sisko’s voice sounded across the empty holodeck. “Princeps, my apologies for interrupting you…”
“What is it?” His reply was terse and clipped. “I left orders that I was not to be disturbed!”
Jacob hesitated before answering, a certain sign of something amiss. “Lord, we have received a priority omega subspace message.”
“Omega?” It was the highest security classification a starship commander could ever expect to hear, reserved for declarations of war, emergencies on a galactic scale, or for the word of the Khan himself. The last time Bashir had heard that code, it had been to warn of a Borg incursion in the Tarod system.
“The signal originates from the Great Palace on Earth,” continued the adjutant. “It bears the personal cipher of his excellency Khan Tiberius Sejanus Singh. He awaits your immediate answer, sir.”
6
“What do you think you are doing with me?” Rain demanded, trying to put up a false front of stern displeasure; but the tremor in her voice was as clear as day. The trooper in black shoved her forward, pressing his hand to the small of her back. Robinson stumbled and lost her balance, the deck plates of the Defiance turning and coming up to meet her.
Strong hands gripped her arms and suspended her in mid-fall. The jarring motion made her wince in pain as she was pulled back upright.
“Clumsy. I never thought Basics would be so uncoordinated. You should watch where you are walking. You could end up hurting yourself.”
O’Brien. Rain remembered hearing his name in passing. The big, thickset man had the look of a heavy, as if he’d be better suited to wearing a black tux and dark glasses at the door to some rich-bitch nightclub on the Strip…. But the Strip doesn’t exist anymore, Rain, she told herself, Sunset and Melrose, Griffith Park and Dodger Stadium, all of L.A. ashed by the nukes…And this creep’s great-grandpa was probably one of the people who made it happen.
She shook off his grip and he released her. “Get your paws off me, you ape.”
O’Brien’s face creased in anger and he cocked back his fist, ready to backhand her. When she flinched, he smirked and relaxed. “You are a lot closer to the primates than we are, girl. Do not forget that.”
“Monkey see, monkey do,” Rain couldn’t stop herself tossing in one more jibe, but O’Brien let it go.
He gestured to the trooper escorting her. “Orders from the princeps?”
“He told me to ‘take her away,’ sir,” repeated the other man.
“Did he?” O’Brien leered at Robinson. “Well, then. You had better do as our commander demands. Come with me. We will find a nice cell to keep this Basic trash out of the way.”
“Hey,” Rain broke in, “you can’t do that, I haven’t done anything wrong—”
He ignored her. “I do not want to dirty my hands on this throwback anymore. If she resists in any way, break one of her limbs. The arms first. But leave the legs, so she can still walk.”
Dax schooled her face to show the usual blank obeisance that was expected of her, so that when the tingle of the matter transporter faded away, she greeted the hatchet-faced woman at the control console in precisely the way a helot should; head bowed, eyes averted. “Thank you, technician,” she said, but the human woman wasn’t paying her any attention.
She stepped off the pad and exited the chamber, throwing the operator a quick look over her shoulder. The woman had already forgotten about the Trill, and was working through a diagnostic series. Transporter staff duty was one of the few “menial” shipboard tasks that was never given to a helot to perform, except in the most dire of emergencies. It was a matter of trust. Nonhumans were not deemed dependable enough to be in charge of a device that could scatter a person’s molecules to the solar winds; it was one of the myriad ways that the ubers used to remind others of their inferior status.
Dax clutched the hand computer to her chest, thinking of the precious data hidden
inside it. The innocuous device had the capacity to be more lethal than a bomb; it was a weapon of incredible destructive potential, if only she could use it correctly.
She halted, glancing around the transporter chamber’s anteroom. She had expected to find Rain Robinson here, waiting to be returned to her vessel. The fact that the woman was nowhere in sight instantly sent a warning chill across Ezri’s skin. The helot went to the translucent data panel in the wall and tapped it. “Interrogative,” she said, “location query.”
“Recognize Ezri Dax, helot ordinal.” The synthetic female voice was stern and abrupt. “Your access is restricted. This activation of ship’s systems will be noted.”
She nodded absently. Defiance’s main computer, like many systems aboard the ship, was off-limits to nonhumans except by prior approval. But as with much of the web of rules and permissions in operation within the Khanate, Dax had long ago found ways to get around them. “Override, Dax Kappa Twelve.”
The panel emitted a peculiar squawk as an illegal pass code program Ezri had secreted inside the mainframe activated. “Ready,” said the voice, in a more polite tone.
“Where is the woman called Rain Robinson? Is she still aboard the ship?”
“Confirmed,” came the answer. “Uncategorized humanoid female designation ‘Rain Robinson’ is aboard the Defiance. Current location, security tier, section six. Subject is undergoing processing.”
Dax’s brow furrowed. Section six; the cells. She had been there only hours earlier, to speak privately with Kira Nerys. The term processing meant just one thing. Rain was now a prisoner of the Khanate, and there was little doubt in Ezri’s mind that the rest of her crewmates aboard the Botany Bay would soon share the same fate.
“Attention,” said the computer. “There is an alert awaiting your notice.”
She leaned closer to the panel. “Tell me,” Ezri demanded. Along with a backdoor subroutine into the warship’s security protocols, Dax had also set certain criteria to run in an invisible scan program. If any one of a number of key events, orders, or conditions was highlighted, it could be quietly and covertly brought to her attention. Similar techniques had allowed her to stay one step ahead of her masters for decades.
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