by Dayton Ward
Picard answered first. “We carry out the orders we’re given, Doctor.” Chen heard the slight edge in his voice, which only confirmed for her that she had interrupted a heated discussion between the captain and the ship’s chief medical officer. The fact that they also were married could only have added to the tension, and while it was obvious that Picard was doing his level best to maintain a strict separation between those two facets of their relationship, Doctor Crusher was being far less forgiving, even with Chen sitting right here in the same room.
Please let there be a warp core breach. Now would be a good time for that.
Turning to Chen, Picard said, “Lieutenant, I called you here so that we might prepare for tomorrow’s sessions, after the Typhon Pact’s representatives finally arrive.” The Enterprise had been holding station for the better part of two weeks, waiting for the diplomatic cadre to arrive. Chen thought the entire notion of having the Federation flagship parked in orbit for no reason was ridiculous, but the captain had taken advantage of the opportunity to order shore leave for all off-duty personnel.
“Grand Nagus Rom will be sitting in on the first of the day’s discussions,” Picard continued, “and I expect the Pact’s diplomatic cadre has been waiting for this opportunity to make their case with particular zeal. They no doubt will bring to the forefront the uncertainty in our own government with respect to President Bacco’s assassination, as well as any lingering doubts regarding our resolve even with Andor’s imminent return to the Federation.”
He paused, glancing to Crusher before adding, “I plan to let our own diplomatic team address those issues, but I’m anticipating the subject turning to matters of security. To that end, I would like you to gather relevant facts and figures regarding Starfleet’s unclassified operations during the past thirty-six months, with an emphasis on relief efforts in the wake of the Borg invasion, as well as any joint missions or exercises conducted between Starfleet and the Ferengi militia.” A small grin teased the corners of his mouth. “I seem to recall at least one or two reports of Ferengi freighters or other merchant shipping traffic encountering issues while traversing space supposedly under Pact control. That might make for some interesting conversation.”
Feeling at ease for the first time since entering the lounge, Chen returned the smile. “I’ll get started collecting the relevant data, sir.” She had read a few scattered reports regarding civilian merchant ships experiencing difficulties such as Picard described, though she did not recall any mention of Ferengi vessels. It would be interesting to see if the captain’s hunch paid off and how he might use such information in the next day’s round-table discussions with the Grand Nagus. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Captain?”
“No, Lieutenant. That will be all.” As Chen rose from her seat, he held up one hand. “I trust you will treat this conversation as privileged?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Chen replied. It was the first time in a while he had asked her anything along those lines. While their relationship had gotten off to anything but a smooth start upon her arriving aboard the Enterprise for duty—owing in large part to her own unorthodox attitude and methods—Picard had come to trust her, even to confide in her during missions requiring her particular expertise. She also had made great strides during her time aboard ship, thanks to the captain’s standing order and philosophy that junior officers not be content with their own assigned positions. Instead, they were expected to cross train with departments and personnel outside their regular duties. Commander Worf had said as much during her first meeting with him. Speaking as though recalling a distant, fond memory of his own days as a young lieutenant under Picard’s command, the first officer had informed her, “Lieutenant, our captain wants his junior officers to learn, learn, learn.”
Despite all of this, Chen and Picard were not friends, of course, but neither were they enemies. The captain was a private man, and his relationships with officers like Worf, Commander La Forge, and even Doctor Crusher were the product of decades of shared service and sacrifice. Chen knew she had a long way to go before she earned a place within Picard’s inner circle, if that even was possible. Should such a milestone never come to pass, it would not be due to her failure to live up to the confidence he placed in her.
Not a chance.
Three
Jean-Luc Picard said nothing, nor did he even move until after the lounge’s doors slid shut in the wake of Lieutenant Chen’s departure. Only when he and Beverly once again were alone did he look across the conference table to his wife, who now regarded him with a look of skepticism.
“Do you think she bought it?” the doctor asked.
“I believe so. For the moment, anyway.” Picard offered a sly grin. “You may have come on a bit strong there at one point.”
Beverly made a show of rolling her eyes. “Everybody’s a critic.” Leaving her chair, she moved to the corner of the table to Picard’s right and leaned against it, resting her hands in her lap. “At least the hard part’s over. I was getting tired of playing the game.”
“It’s necessary,” Picard replied, reaching over to place his hand atop hers. “The fight had to seem like a natural outgrowth from a string of disagreements you and I allegedly have been having.” They had been promoting their ruse for the past four days, sowing the seeds of disinformation that had led them to this meeting. “I must admit that it hasn’t been easy, fighting in front of the crew.”
Beverly smiled. “You prefer that we fight in private?”
“You know what I mean,” Picard countered. Sighing, he let his gaze drift to the stars visible beyond the lounge’s viewing ports. “I’ve had to keep information from the crew for security reasons before, of course, and I’ve even lied to them on occasion for the same purpose. I don’t know why, but this deception feels different, somehow.” Shaking his head, he returned his attention to Beverly. “You’ve not heard anything further from your friend?”
“No,” the doctor replied. “Considering all the trouble Ilona went through just to get the first message to me, I’m not expecting him to risk contacting me again. It’ll be up to me to reach out to him, once I’m clear of the Enterprise.”
The odd sequence of events that had put Picard and Crusher on this course began soon after the Enterprise’s arrival at Ferenginar, with the ship in orbit for nearly two weeks while it and the Ferengi Alliance awaited the “pending” arrival of the ship carrying a diplomatic envoy from the Typhon Pact. Picard, making a courtesy visit to the Federation embassy, was given a message delivered to him from one of the planet’s leading private financial institutions. According to the courier, the communication, stored on an encrypted data chip, was intended for Beverly and it should not be accessed using the Enterprise’s computer or communications system.
Curious and wary of what it might mean, Picard had crafted a ruse that allowed Beverly to beam down to the planet’s surface for the ostensible purpose of joining him for dinner at the embassy. Once there, she had accessed the encrypted data chip and shared with Picard the message recorded for her by Ilona Daret, a Cardassian physician whom Beverly—so far as Picard knew—had not seen in years. After the usual pleasantries came Daret’s wish for him and Beverly to talk in person at the earliest opportunity and that Beverly should travel to see him.
“It just seems odd that he would seek you out now, after all these years,” Picard said. “And the message he sent you isn’t exactly something that puts me at ease.” The end of Daret’s recorded communication was troubling, couched as it was in the Cardassian’s final, vague statement: Ishan Anjar is not who he purports to be.
“I have no idea what it might mean,” Beverly replied. “I’ve checked and rechecked, and there’s nothing else on the chip. I’m even having Geordi give it the once-over, but so far he hasn’t found anything, either.”
Picard sighed. If the Enterprise’s chief engineer had come away from his investigative efforts with no results, then there almost certainly was nothing to be found. Risin
g from his seat, Picard moved to stand at the viewing ports. “The last time I saw Daret was during that mission to the Cardassian labor planet, toward the end of the Bajoran Occupation.”
Nodding, Crusher said, “Jevalan. I remember.”
The aftermath of the Cardassian evacuation of that world, home to a massive mining camp operation with several thousand Bajoran nationals serving as forced labor, remained one of the more haunting experiences Picard had endured over the course of his Starfleet career. He recalled the horrific scenes that had greeted him and the rest of an Enterprise-D away team following the starship’s arrival at Jevalan. Massive swaths of the planet had been ravaged by the mining operation, with the Bajoran slaves enduring squalid living conditions. After the closest thing to an organized revolt by the oppressed workers threatened to overwhelm the far smaller numbers of their overseers, the Cardassians evacuated the planet, but not before inflicting upon those who would rebel against them one last wave of misery, death, and destruction. The Enterprise was among the first vessels to bring assistance to the stricken world and those fortunate to survive the final assault, which the Cardassians had claimed to be necessary for reasons of “self-defense.”
Among the few bright spots amid all the suffering and devastation was Ilona Daret, one of a handful of Cardassians—mostly physicians and support personnel abandoned by their military counterparts. Despite facing their own punishment and possible execution at the hands of the Bajorans, Daret and his colleagues had done their best to treat the scores of wounded, whether slave or former oppressor. He had been working for his fifth-consecutive day without rest at the time of the Enterprise’s arrival.
“Your friend Daret impressed me for a second time that day,” Picard said. “The first was during that prisoner exchange you and he orchestrated.” The transfer of three Starfleet Intelligence officers, injured while on a covert mission in Cardassian space and later captured by a Cardassian cruiser, had come during Picard’s first year as captain of the Enterprise-D. Beverly and his former chief of security, the late Lieutenant Natasha Yar, had traveled into Cardassian territory in order to rendezvous with the vessel and retrieve the officers, in the interests of maintaining the fragile peace between the Federation and the Cardassian Union after a lengthy conflict.
It was during that mission that Picard had learned how Beverly had come to know the physician during the war. Their relationship began with him as a wounded prisoner following a Cardassian attack on a Federation supply depot while Beverly was serving aboard a Starfleet medical ship. After she treated his injuries, Daret assisted her and the other doctors to treat both Cardassian and Federation wounded. Picard would not see him again until the mission at Jevalan, but according to Beverly, they had continued to correspond in sporadic fashion over the years. “Where is he now?”
“I have no idea,” Beverly said. “I lost touch with him after the Dominion War.”
“Given the current political climate, if he’s gone to such lengths to contact you, then one has to wonder just what information he’s holding.” Picard crossed his arms, reaching up to rub his chin as he studied the curve of Ferenginar that just was visible beyond the aft port edge of the Enterprise’s expansive primary hull. What he could see of the planet was concealed by heavy cloud cover, indicating yet another in the series of perpetual rain storms that tended to drench the planet. Was the foul weather supposed to somehow be symbolic?
Without turning from the windows, Picard said, “In view of how cautious he’s being with whatever it is he wants to tell you, I think your idea of meeting Daret far from the Enterprise is prudent.” Beverly had been the one to suggest the ruse of her requesting a transfer from the ship for the supposed purpose of “making a change.” With the Enterprise’s movements likely being monitored by President Ishan, Picard knew that the Cardassian physician’s odd request that she join him in person necessitated a scheme which would permit Beverly the appearance of traveling away from the ship while under official orders. The transfer to Deep Space 9, which currently lacked a chief medical officer, as Doctor Julian Bashir remained on Andor—a fugitive from Starfleet and Federation justice—offered the perfect opportunity, and Picard and Crusher’s alleged relationship troubles provided a reason for her to go.
“Did I tell you that Doctor Tropp came to my office this morning?” she asked. “He’d heard the rumors about me resigning my commission and came to talk me out of it.” She chuckled. “You’d think he was trying to keep me from walking out an airlock.”
Picard smiled at the image of the Enterprise’s assistant chief medical officer doing his best to advise Beverly against undertaking any rash action. “It’s that Denobulan disposition of his. It makes him perfectly suited to being a doctor. I assume you’re comfortable with him working in your stead? I’ll have to put in a request to Starfleet for a permanent replacement, just to keep up appearances, but I plan to recommend Tropp for promotion to CMO.”
“Just so long as it’s temporary,” Beverly replied. “But, like you said, it’s necessary. The only way we’re going to pull this off is if the rest of the crew thinks I want a transfer from the Enterprise.”
The reality of life aboard a starship was that, sooner or later, rumors seemed to find their way to every crewmember. Secrets remained private only on rare occasions, and it seemed that the more embarrassing or scintillating the gossip the faster it traveled. Such was the case with the alleged strife between Picard and Crusher, who had taken careful, deliberate steps to show only slight hints of such marital discord for the benefit of selected witnesses. Though Picard, for the most part, maintained his usual composed demeanor in front of the crew—this incident with T’Ryssa Chen notwithstanding—Beverly had decided to play up the illusion of discontent in front of her own staff.
Turning from the viewing ports, Picard said, “I know, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy putting on the charade, or the fact that you’ll soon be leaving me and René behind.” As much as he disliked the deception he and Beverly had engineered, the separation from his wife—and hers from her son—though necessary, was not something to which he looked forward. As for René, his role in the cover story was being explained as a decision by his parents to avoid undue disruption of his normal routines while Beverly went to Deep Space 9 for what was expected to be a short-term assignment. For his part, Picard could not shake the awkward feeling at his wife leaving on a dangerous mission while he remained here, safe aboard the Enterprise, with their son.
Is this how she felt every time Jack left her and Wesley? There were very few days that passed without Picard thinking of his late friend and Beverly’s first husband, Jack Crusher. After he was killed in the line of duty while assigned to the Stargazer, it had been Picard’s unpleasant duty to escort Jack’s body home and deliver the tragic news to Beverly.
And then fate took over, and here we are, all these years later.
“Is there any indication that anybody knows what we’re up to?” Beverly asked. “I worry about all the sneaking around we’ve had to do. Ishan or one of his minions is still going to be suspicious, no matter how careful we are.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” There was no way to know if Ishan had succeeded in recruiting a spy from the Enterprise crew, but Picard was unwilling to risk overlooking that possibility. Hence, the elaborate deception designed to remove Beverly from the ship. How long could the ruse continue before it was exposed by Ishan or someone else?
If the last, cryptic message he had received from Will Riker was any indication, Picard knew that Ishan or someone from his circle of supporters was doing their level best to monitor any interaction between him and the admiral. Riker’s communique had been a simple message, intended to warn Picard that his early suspicions about the perpetrators of President Nanietta Bacco’s assassination might well be correct.
Sometimes the enemy hides in plain sight.
President Ishan, suspected by Riker and now Picard of having at least some involvement in Nanietta Bacco’s assassinat
ion, seemed to be growing more paranoid with each passing day. The president pro tempore had done his level best to contain the movements and communications of numerous members of the Federation government as well as the high echelons of Starfleet’s command hierarchy. Admirals Riker and Leonard James Akaar in particular appeared to be operating on a very tight leash. Then there were missions like the one given to the Enterprise, which Picard knew had been done simply to contain the Federation flagship and isolate him. The admiral already had set into motion a covert investigation into Ishan with the aim of finding incontrovertible truth of the interim president’s culpability in Bacco’s death. If such evidence existed, it needed to be found as soon as possible, preferably before the upcoming elections that might solidify Ishan’s position of power. With so much at stake, Ishan and his people would not leave anything to chance.
Caution must be our watchword.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the ship’s intercom beeping for attention, followed by the voice of the Enterprise’s chief engineer.
“La Forge to Doctor Crusher.”
Her eyebrows rising in surprise, Beverly reached up to tap her communicator badge. “Crusher here, Geordi. The captain’s here, too.”
“Sorry to disturb you both,” La Forge replied, “but you asked me to contact you if I found something on that data chip.”
Picard watched his wife’s expression change at this news. Her eyes widened, and her jaw clenched. Her entire body seemed to be tensing in anticipation. Leaning forward in his chair, he asked, “What have you found, Commander?”
“Another message, sir. It’s short and encrypted, text only, and was buried within the chip’s data storage matrix. From what I can tell, Doctor Crusher’s friend wanted her to find it, but no one else. The only thing it says is ‘Remember’ and two series of numbers. One group is a communications frequency and the other is a set of spatial coordinates, which the computer has identified as the planet Jevalan, in the Doltiri system.”
