“How long was I out? Has there been any word from the police about the bombs?” Bashir asked.
The nurse gave him a guarded but quizzical look. “Bombs? I don’t understand.”
Then there’s still time, Bashir thought, his pulse quickened by both hope and fear.
“They’ve now found three devices,” the lieutenant said, his voice competing with the static issuing from Gard’s comm device.
Gard frowned. “They’re all near the Senate Tower?”
“Yes, sir. Each was discovered within half a kilometer of the Tower.”
Gard’s mind whirled. Short-range bombs, then. Low-yield devices probably intended to saturate the area. They’ve targeted the government. And probably the Symbiosis Commission as well.
“Lieutenant, make certain the guard units at the SymCom are aware that—”
The comm device flared up into a loud hash of static, just a split second before the lights inside the command center’s turbolift blinked out. Gard fancied he could feel the blast strike him and pass entirely through his body, even though he could neither see nor hear it. Even though he was in a shielded building, he felt certain that whatever had just happened out there had passed through the thick, rad-shielded walls, at least partially.
His symbiont lurched and scrambled within him, and Gard dropped to the turbolift floor, writhing in agony. Holding his belly, he tried to calm himself, his whole self.
We’re not going to die in the dark. We’re not going to die in the dark. He thought it again and again, repeating it like a mantra.
Gard raised his phaser and pointed it at the turbolift entrance, praying that the lift wasn’t stalled somewhere between the reinforced floors.
The beam began melting an aperture in the doors, the glowing metal and phaser burst providing a temporary brilliance.
We’re not going to die in the dark.
The door gave way. Outside he could hear people screaming and equipment tumbling and crashing.
Jirin Tambor heard a chime, and in a nanosecond, he was flooded with memories, even as he felt the energy wash over and through him as the bomb exploded.
The neurogenic radiation blasts would sever the links between the joined and the strange creatures that dwelled in their pouches.
He remembered playing in the snow with his baby brother Kal, who had made an art of falling down.
The joined would soon be in excruciating agony, and their stranglehold on the planet would be broken.
He saw his first love, Hennene, emerging from the cold wavelets of Lake Devritane, water beading on her skin, her smile radiant despite her shivers as he rushed toward her with the towel.
The unjoined would be mostly unaffected. A very few would be hurt due to the electromagnetic pulse that would accompany the radiation dispersal. But the lives of the survivors—of the majority of Trill—would be much improved by their sacrifice.
He saw Hennene lying cold on the hospital bed, the doctor standing nearby ready to tell him that their baby had also died.
The pulse would destroy most of the government’s communications capabilities, would wipe its files, drain the power from its hovercars and its weapons.
He heard the Commission doctor tell him again—emphatically this time, as if he’d been talking to a recalcitrant child—that he was not qualified to carry a symbiont, even if that denial meant certain death from the malignancy that was spreading throughout his body.
Trill society would begin again tomorrow, but he would not be there to greet it.
Hennene. He tried to speak her name aloud, but his proximity to the blast had ravaged his body too badly. Light and darkness came in equal measure, a final sunset in the depths of the night.
Dante could not have crafted a more explicit version of hell than the one that existed in this place. As a doctor, Julian Bashir was used to trauma and suffering—he had dealt with severe episodes of both during the Dominion War—but those chaotic, bloody moments had not been entirely unexpected.
Here, however, in the bedlam of Trill’s Manev Central Hospital, things seemed very different. As the overflowing triage center filled with cacophonous screams and tortured wails, Bashir and the other physicians and medics struggled against a tide of death whose source had been both surprising and invisible.
And though Bashir’s medical conscience did not want to admit his own personal fears, the worst part for him was having no way to know whether Ezri had survived the initial bioelectric attacks—or even if she was in danger at all. But as Trill society continued to collapse around him, and reports kept coming in of hundreds—or maybe thousands—more casualties, he could only respond to the unfolding crisis as best he could, while striving to avoid considering the personal loss he might have to face in the very near future.
The little boy with the spinal injury was going to live. He might even make a full recovery. No thanks, Bashir thought bitterly, to people like Doctor Torvin, who keep putting the joined patients at the head of the line whether their injuries warrant it or not.
But he also knew that dozens of joined patients here tonight were in extremely grave condition, obviously because of the bombings. And it was equally clear to him that the way to save their hosts was not to be found in the hurly-burly of Manev Central Hospital’s trauma unit.
It might, however, be found among the files relating to an incident Bashir himself had become caught up in, on a visit to Trill four years prior….
Shortly after finishing surgery on the boy, Bashir edged his way down a hallway on the hospital’s seventh floor. This upper level was relatively quiet, mainly because the staff was refusing to take the sometimes malfunctioning turbolifts, and it was too difficult to get the hover-gurneys up the stairwells. There wasn’t much on this floor that could help anyone process or treat the dying patients anyhow; it was mostly reserved for the private offices of the doctors and administrators, in addition to break rooms for the support staff.
Bashir stopped at the door to one of the administration offices, trying to open it. It wouldn’t budge. He saw that it required an identification badge, and noted that the reader was dark. Probably not working, like a lot of things around here. He wondered if whatever shielding had protected most of the hospital from the blasts was thinner here on the upper floors. That would certainly give the besieged staff another reason not to bring the joined up past the first few levels.
Looking up and down the halls to make certain he was alone, Bashir grabbed the lid from a trash receptacle and smashed it into the glass of the office door. Despite the loudness of the sound, he didn’t hear any footfalls or cries of alarm.
Gingerly he reached inside and opened the door, then let himself into the offices. He quickly settled in behind one of the desks and activated the computer system. For a moment, the viewscreen was dark, and he felt stupid. If the door reader wasn’t working, what made me think the computers would still be running?
But then the screen flickered to life. The interface was different from most of the designs he was used to, but at the Academy he had become familiar with a multitude of diverse computer systems.
He began the obvious search patterns, trolling both the Trill medical database and the Symbiosis Commission database. Bethan Roa. Roa, Bethan. Roa symbiont.
No records found within the search parameters. Ignoring the on-screen message, he considered others who had known Roa.
Verad Kalon. Kalon, Verad.
No records found within the search parameters.
Duhan Vos. Vos, Duhan. Vos symbiont.
Finally, a pair of records came up, and Bashir read them quickly. The symbiont Vos had been joined to Duhan Weckna some twenty-five years ago, then the joined Trill had ascended to the Symbiosis Commission in 2373. Just as Dr. Torvin had already told him, Vos had been removed from his post about a year later, while under investigation for financial improprieties. His file ended abruptly, as though Vos had ceased to exist at that time.
Bashir cursed. Unless he could find some
other link to Bethan Roa’s apparently lost research, there would be no help for hundreds of joined Trills whose connection to their symbionts had been sundered by the radiation blasts.
Wearily, he stood up from his seat and exited the office, glass crunching beneath his boots.
Dr. Torvin had said that Bashir’s medical help would be useful elsewhere in the hospital, and every second he spent looking for the evidently nonexistent research of Bethan Roa, another life might be lost. And Trill cannot afford to lose any more than it has already lost today, he thought, his spirits downcast.
Bashir stepped into the cool stairwell and began his descent back into the hell that waited below.
13
The morning sun blazed across the distant, snow-capped mountains as Ranul Keru stood just inside the cavern entrance, watching the gathering on the rocky plain below with increasing trepidation. The crowd had become boisterous in the half hour since Keru had watched Ezri Dax descend into the symbiont pools.
“What’s riling them up now?” he asked General Taulin Cyl, who stood nearby on a rocky outcropping that led to the entrance to the Caves of Mak’ala. The general was conferring with one of the military guards.
“We don’t know,” Cyl said. “We have managed to target some of the ringleaders, and from the way they’ve been checking their chronometers, they’re expecting something to happen soon.”
“Coordinated attacks?” Keru asked. “Could they be moving against other spawning grounds or the Symbiosis Commission?”
Cyl scowled. “Unfortunately, all communications out of here are still being jammed. We don’t know what’s happening elsewhere, and I doubt anybody outside of the caves is hearing the signals we’re broadcasting either.”
Keru surveyed the crowd. Some of them certainly fit the profile of the disheveled, wild-eyed unjoined revolutionary, but more than a few didn’t. A few protesters displayed placards emblazoned with such slogans as JOINED FOR UNJOINED RIGHTS and MY DAUGHTER DESERVES A SYMBIONT, TOO! He was only mildly surprised to see that joined Trills had rallied to the cause of the disgruntled unjoined majority. Like every Guardian who made it through the Order’s probationary period, he understood the intrinsic unfairness of the way the benefits of symbiosis were distributed among a populace taught since birth to strive to become respected links in a great mnemonic chain. He simply had never seen a better alternative. There were many humanoids who wished to be joined, and only a relative handful of available symbionts. And those symbionts required his protection, now more than ever.
It’s not the symbionts’ fault that our society has flaws. It’s our fault. If we want a fairer world, then we humanoids will have to build it ourselves. Keru knew that he wasn’t unique in holding this opinion; many of the protesters gathered here at Mak’ala, as well as those congregating in the cities, were indeed working to change Trill society; Keru took issue only with some of the means being employed, rather than the ends.
He heard a faint clattering sound coming from the rock face that extended to the summit of the mountain from which Mak’ala was carved, and turned to see some small stone fragments tumble onto a nearby overhead ledge. He looked up, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling.
“General! Above us!”
Keru did a quick count. Eight people, men and women garbed in utilitarian gray paramilitary garb, were rappelling down the cavern wall toward them, descending rapidly on whip-thin cords. Several of them were conspicuously armed. Keru assumed that they must have had themselves surreptitiously beamed onto the mountain’s summit, or to some discreet place nearby. Evidently their unexpected entrance had also enabled them to overcome the small contingent of guards Cyl had assigned to the high terrain.
Even as the general and his guard drew their phasers, three of the intruders opened fire from above. Keru ducked and rolled into the cover of the cave entrance, shouting to the other Guardians as he moved. “We’re under attack! Eight intruders, from above!”
Rantic Lan, one of the youngest members of the Order, threw him the Starfleet phaser that Dax had left behind. Keru caught it one-handed, then whirled back toward the entrance. He saw booted feet descending from above and waited, timing his shot. A moment later, when the first torso became visible from inside the shelter of the cavern entrance, he fired, sending the attacker spinning off the ledge; stunned, the intruder dropped his weapon and swung limply, entangled in his own rappelling line.
Keru rushed toward the ledge as the Guardians arrayed themselves behind him. He could hear shouts and sounds of fighting coming from the direction of the crowd outside; apparently the demonstrators had begun openly clashing with the Trill military contingent as well.
Before he could determine what had happened to Cyl and the other soldier, several more attackers leaned around the cavern entrance, firing particle weapons into the cave. Keru felt one blast singe his shoulder, and then heard a cry from one of his fellow Guardians behind him. Ducking behind an outcropping of the stony wall, Keru returned fire, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before his position was pinned down. And I’m the only one down here with phaser.
A barrage of fire rained onto his position, confirming his fear that his time was quickly running out. Then, he heard the sound of more phaser fire, this time from well outside the cave entrance. Keru peeked around the rock formation before him to see a second attacker fall, even as the remaining six spilled into the passageway a few meters away.
Keru tried to get a bead on the nearest of them but was distracted as a dozen or so other Guardians moved into offensive mode. Armed with nothing more than wooden staves, knives, and fists, they ran to defend the caves and the helpless symbionts in their charge. But the interlopers apparently had both phasers and disruptors—as well as no apparent compunctions against hitting one of their own.
These bastards are on a suicide mission. That thought turned Keru’s heart to ice, but also galvanized him into action.
Keru tucked the phaser into his tunic, having decided that the odds of hitting another Guardian were too great to risk trying to take another shot. Running across the dimly lit, rocky chamber, he tackled a man who was stabbing Pran Sevos with the elderly Guardian’s own knife. They rolled to the side of the wounded Pran, but Keru couldn’t get a firm grip since his foe was slippery with his victim’s blood. The attacker grimaced as he raised the knife, but Keru drove a knee hard into his attacker’s abdomen, forcing the air from his lungs and sending his knife skittering across the cavern floor. Rising to his feet, Keru slammed his adversary’s much smaller body into a rocky wall, knocking him senseless.
Then Keru heard a phaser burst, and saw that Pran’s attacker had crumpled at the base of the wall.
Turning, Keru saw Cyl standing with a phaser in his hand. He was a bit bruised and bloodied, but didn’t appear to be seriously injured. He noticed that the fighting that had begun so quickly in the entranceway was mostly over already. The intruders apparently weren’t used to fighting in close quarters inside a darkened cave. The surviving Guardians were already moving to administer first aid to Pran and several other wounded Guardians, after having subdued the remaining five attackers.
Six, Keru thought with a start. There were six of them! He scrambled down the passageway toward the interior of the caves and saw a female Guardian named Nelenne Lef lying prostrate on the ground ahead. After stopping to confirm that she was merely stunned, he moved beyond her as quickly as he could. Luckily, I know the passageways better than this intruder does, Keru thought, trying not to be distracted by worry over his fallen friend.
A moment later he turned a corner and saw a gray-garbed man ahead of him, running down the passage toward the pools. Keru skidded to a stop and grabbed a loose piece of flattened rock from the cave floor. As a child he had been a champion rock-skipper at the Lake Ograls Celebration Days Festival; the aim and skill he had acquired in those carefree days had later made him a formidable velocity opponent during his time in Starfleet.
Keru took a breath and drew his
arm back, then brought it forward again in one seamless, fluid motion. The rock whizzed through the air and struck the running man squarely at the base of his spine. With a hoarse cry, the attacker dropped to the ground as though poleaxed. Keru didn’t need to check; he knew the invader wouldn’t be running anywhere anytime soon.
Rejoining the others, Keru informed them of the injured attacker back in the passageways, then turned to Cyl. “It sounds like they’re mounting a full-scale attack outside.”
“Yes,” Cyl said. “And my men are severely outnumbered.”
With some of the Guardians trailing behind them, Keru and Cyl ran back to the outer cave entrance to survey the scene below. The military men were just barely holding the line, but the crowds were steadily pushing them closer to the base of the cliffs—and to the pathways leading to Mak’ala’s entrance.
Speaking in clipped military tones, Keru and Cyl briefly discussed their options. There weren’t many. Even if the military detachment were to set their weapons to kill, the vast majority of the survivors would quickly overwhelm the skirmish line. Mak’ala would then fall to the angry throngs, and the symbionts would be at their mercy.
Prompted by his Starfleet training, Keru considered another option. He pointed to the Federation runabout that was parked about ten meters behind the skirmish line. “If I can get down to the Rio Grande, General, I think I might be able to do something about this.”
Cyl nodded, his own thoughts apparently moving in precisely the same direction. “Let’s do it.”
Moments later, after having left the Guardians armed with the particle weapons taken from their attackers, Keru and Cyl had reached the cover of a rocky outcropping only meters away from the runabout. The igneous stone formation formed a low escarpment that rose perhaps three meters above the spacecraft’s dorsal surface.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Two Page 16
