The Trail: A Star Trek Novel (New Frontier Reloaded Book 1)

by ROVER MARIE TOWLE

  “Revo-what?” Ezri says. “Revolution? Who said anything about. . . Maybe.”

  Girani looks in the direction of the wormhole and murmurs something in Bajoran. She shakes her head. “If Timor is suspected of being a refugee, then informing his homeworld is up to my discretion. As of right now, I'm choosing not to. I'll let you know if anything changes.”

  Ezri and Lenara thank her and head back out onto the Promenade, where Ezri promptly stumbles and vomits up the raktajino she had for breakfast. “Wow.” Bent over, she casts a sideways glance at Lenara. “This is really attractive.”

  “Are you okay?” Lenara presses a hand to her forehead.

  “I'm fine.” Ezri straightens up and very nearly misses spewing all over Lenara. “Aren't you glad you forsook Trill society for a piece of this?”

  Lenara lays a hand on Ezri's lower back, steering her back towards the infirmary. “Let's get you looked at.”

  “No. I'm fine. I'm just tired. That always makes my spacesickness worse.”

  “You haven't been sleeping.”

  “You noticed? I was trying not to move around too much.”

  “That's how I knew you weren't sleeping. You have a tendency of kicking in your sleep like an Earth canine chasing after a butterfly in a dream.” She pats the back of Ezri's head. “You should go home and rest. I'll take care of our friends at Vic's.”

  “Yeah, I think I'll call off sick. Maybe I can get a few minutes sleep in my eight hour shift.” Ezri stares down at the twin puddles of vomit. “Please apologize to whoever has to clean that up.”

  –

  Ezri wakes from her nap feeling more rested than she has in months. Maybe securing another symbiont put her mind at ease enough to get some quality shut-eye. In any case, she climbs out of bed not in solemn resignation that sleep won't come, but in satisfaction that it did. She raises her arms high above her head, stretching.

  “Ow.” She grabs her shoulder. A twinge. Probably from sleeping on it wrong. She'll have to stretch later.

  Now, she wants to brush her teeth again to make sure the smell of vomit is gone and then check on the symbiont. Ezri heads to the commode, finding no one in her quarters at all (strange for this time of day) and a dull ache in her lower back with each step. Maybe it wasn't just spacesickness; maybe she is coming down with something, like a virus.

  Ezri turns on the bathroom light. And screams. Her voice makes no sound.

  In the mirror, a face that used to be hers greets her: brown eyes, thin lips, ochre skin etched with deep wrinkles, long hair retaining its color only with the aid of dye washes every two months.

  Audrid, the later years.

  Ezri covers her silent mouth with her hands. Her fingernails are manicured perfectly, ready to be seen by any head of state wishing to visit a retired Trill dignitary. The nail polish is her granddaughter's favorite color.

  Ezri backs out of the bathroom, unable to tear her eyes away from her—from Audrid's reflection.

  “Enjoying my wife?” Torias' voice echoes strange and unreal throughout the living room.

  Ezri whirls around, finding him leaned up against the front door. Ezri drinks him in, the sight of him: crisp flightsuit proudly starched by Nilani, chin-length braids pulled out of his eyes and tucked inside his lucky cap, his unblemished bronze skin not yet burnt away by engine fuel. He's exactly the same as the last time Dax saw him—in a reflection on the shiny hull of his shuttlecraft before taking his last flight.

  Words rise in Ezri's throat like stomach acid but she can't seem to expel them.

  “Enjoying my life?” Jadzia says. Her pale skin is flush with joy. . . They were going to have a baby. It was going to be beautiful. She smiles. “First Worf, then Julian, now Lenara.” Jadzia slaps Ezri playfully on the back. “You're covering all my greatest hits, aren't you?”

  “I'm happy if you're happy,” Torias says.

  “She's happy,” Jadzia says. “Look at her. She's glowing.”

  “She is, isn't she?”

  “Like a bride on her wedding day.”

  “I won't tell, if you won't tell.”

  “I won't either.” Jadzia crosses her fingers.

  “And you shouldn't. Kahn would be heartbroken if she knew.”

  “Everyone would be heartbroken.”

  “They'd think you were some kind of monster.”

  Jadzia pinches Ezri's wrinkled cheeks. “You are a monster.”

  “We're all monsters, aren't we?”

  “True.”

  “Curzon was hedonistic.”

  “Lela was hopelessly partisan,” Jadzia adds.

  “Tobin was spiteful.”

  “Emony was elitist.”

  “Joran was sadistic.”

  “Torias was careless,” Jadzia says.

  “Jadzia was flighty,” Torias spits back.

  “Audrid was. . .”

  “Audrid was. . .”

  “Audrid was. . .”

  “Audrid was. . .”

  Ezri wakes tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. Her hands fly to her face, feeling for wrinkles and finding smooth, supple skin. She stumbles over to the vanity mirror to make sure she hasn't turned into Jadzia or Torias, both of whom had nice soft skin before they died. But it's just her. Just Ezri.

  She rests her forehead on the cool of the mirror. “What was that about?” she groans.

  But she knows what it was about. She's having difficulty reconciling her past lives with her current one. Just like that touchy-feely Vulcan in Quark's said.

  It's fairly obvious what her conflict with Torias and Jadzia is; it sleeps beside her in bed. But Audrid? True, Audrid was head of the same body Ezri is presently trying to overthrow, but why not, you know, name it directly like Torias and Jadzia did? Why the silence and weird imagery and nights of bad sleep?

  “If you could tell me what your problem is, I'd be really thankful,” Ezri says aloud to the room.

  Audrid doesn't answer.

  “Fine. If that won't get you talking, maybe this will.” Ezri lights a candle in front of the mirror and recites the secret words of the Rite of Emergence. But nothing. Not even a glimmer of Audrid. So, she tries again and again and again and. . .

  They really need Guardians on their side.

  –

  Ezri is gazing out the porthole when Lenara comes home. “Feeling any better?” Lenara asks.

  Ezri nods. “Any news about Timor?”

  “No, but Girani is running a Trill Prime specific toxicology screen. We should have answers as soon as tomorrow morning.”

  “That's good.” Ezri yawns around the words. “Excuse me.”

  “Come on.” Lenara holds Ezri's hand. “Let's go to bed.”

  A half an hour later, long before Lenara drifts off to sleep, she watches Ezri slip out of bed and out of their bedroom.

  Lenara says nothing. She's known Dax long enough to know when she needs space.

  –

  Ezri trips through the halls, eyes half-closed, brain half-asleep. Outside the O'Brien's old room, she sees a pregnant Kira arguing with Miles about caffeine consumption. On the Promenade, Odo pulls Jake and Nog toward his office by their ears. Julian tells her she and Worf could start a family sooner than they anticipated. In the Bajoran shrine, Dukat shoots her.

  The Vulcan man is there, standing over her corpse. “Do you seek answers?” he asks.

  She nods—a postmortem twitch.

  “Good.” He pulls her up and leads her away. She doesn't know where.

  The room is small, undecorated, likely temporary housing in the habitat ring. The man sits her down on a hard couch.

  Coming out of the commode, another Vulcan man chastises, “Sybok, you are not supposed to go out un—” He sees Ezri and freezes. He's said something he shouldn't have said.

  She looks up to the man who led her there for a clue and a newsreel plays from Dax's memory. “All inbound transport to Nimbus III has been halted today following a terrorist uprising that has resulted in the commandeerin
g of a Starfleet vessel,” the reporter reads. “While Starfleet refuses to provide any details regarding the identity of the perpetrators, reports from sources on-planet describe the leader as a male Vulcan of approximately eighty years of age, long brown hair, and, most unusually, a smiling face. The leader reportedly calls himself 'Sybok'; whether this is an alias. . .”

  An artist's rendering of the suspect's face overlaps with the Vulcan man's. Give or take a few wrinkles, they are the same.

  “Starfleet reports that the incident on Nimbus III has been resolved,” the reporter says. “The sole casualty is the terrorist leader Sybok.”

  Consciousness becomes difficult.

  –

  Ezri's eyes flutter open. Overhead, three Vulcans—Sybok the dead terrorist, the old woman from Quark's, and the man with loose lips—peer at her with repressed concern on their faces.

  Ezri reaches up, poking Sybok on the chest. He's real. He's there. “You're dead. Am I dead?”

  “None of us are dead,” Sybok says.

  “But you died.”

  “All things are temporary.”

  “Not death. That's fairly permanent.”

  “The men in his family have a peculiar habit of rising from the dead,” the woman says.

  “Oh. . . Are you going to brainwash me?”

  “Sybok does not 'help' people anymore. He has been. . . reformed.”

  “Reformed?”

  “Stonn,” the woman prompts.

  The man at her side presses a button on his wristband and Sybok twitches like he is being hit with a jolt of electricity.

  “I believe the human term is 'shock collar.'”

  “Does it work?” Ezri asks.

  “Mostly,” Stonn says.

  “That's comforting.” Ezri scratches her head. “Why am I here?”

  “Sybok tells us that you could help us,” the woman says.

  “Help you? I don't even know your names.”

  “T'Pring. The male is Stonn. He is mine. The other is Sybok. He is not mine.”

  “Good to know. How do you expect me to help you?”

  “You will know in time. What is most important now is how we can help you.”

  “Can you help me sleep?”

  “Sybok?”

  “Yes,” Sybok says. “I can aid her in sleep.”

  “Very well.” T'Pring nods. “And so you shall.” T'Pring and Stonn head into the other room, T'Pring stopping shortly to say, “Remember, young one, one day I may call upon you for a favor and you must supply.”

  “Sure.” Ezri has no plans to follow through on that, but whatever.

  T'Pring and Stonn leave Ezri alone with the resurrected terrorist, which should scare her more than it does, but lack of sleep has dulled most of her primal senses.

  “How do we—”

  Sybok shushes her, closing his eyes. His face scrunches up, reddening, sweat pours, and he looks vaguely constipated for a few minutes before the interior of Audrid's office at the Symbiosis Commission fades into the living room. Audrid sits at her desk, receiving a Trill in a labcoat who Dax doesn't remember ever meeting.

  “The pathology of the Guardian blight has been confirmed, Madam Commissioner,” the labcoat says. “It isn't a genetic mutation. It is an environmental toxin.”

  Audrid nods. “Very good. I doubt history will look favorably upon the past four centuries of unofficial commission reports calling it a genetic disorder tied to telepathy, but at the very least it should be easier to treat than we expected.”

  “In theory, yes. Practice may prove to be more difficult.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. The toxin is endemic to the Caves of Mak'ala. It seems to be beneficial to the symbionts living there, but deadly to Trill exposed for extended periods of time. That is why we've only seen the blight in Guardians.”

  “Can the toxin be removed?”

  “No.”

  “And neither can the symbionts.”

  “Correct.”

  Audrid spins her chair around and gazes into the city below. “When I assumed this position, my predecessor warned me that I would be forced to make difficult decisions. I thought I knew what he meant, but I was wrong. Not until this very moment did I grasp the enormity of my power, of my responsibility to life on this planet.

  “It is unquestionably immoral to maintain a Guardian workforce in such a toxic environment. But my duty is not to morality. I took an oath to uphold the Symbiosis Commission and protect the symbionts under our care, and that is what I will do.”

  “Madam?”

  “No one can know of what we've discussed here today. I will enter it into official record for the next Commissioner, but neither of us shall breathe a word of this to anyone. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, madam.”

  “But remember this moment, Wiru. Remember the sacrifices we made in Trill lives, in the righteousness of Trillkind, and in our own morality so that the Symbiosis Commission could live beyond us. Remember this moment and pray another like it never comes to pass.”

  The scene fades to Audrid's bedroom in her winter cottage. She lies in bed looking very much like the reflection Ezri saw in her dream earlier: faded, gasping for breath, resigned.

  The labcoat—now many years older—approaches Audrid carrying a syringe with a needle frighteningly long. “Are you certain, madam commissioner?”

  “Yes,” Audrid gasps. “We don't know if Dax's next host will understand the importance of keeping this secret. You have to block those memories.”

  The labcoat nods. “Of course.” She lifts up Audrid's nightshirt, exposing her bare belly. “This would be far less painful if we used a Guardian. But I know we can't.” She presses the needle into Audrid and the symbiont within her. “Think of the memory. Do you have the memory?”

  Audrid nods, gritting her fragile teeth in pain.

  The labcoat plunges the lever of the syringe.

  –

  Lenara waits as long as she can for Ezri to return home from her walk last night before leaving for their appointment with Dr. Girani. Thankfully, the doctor put them both down as Timor's emergency contacts, so Lenara can discuss his condition without Ezri's presence.

  Girani yawns over her PADD. “Toxicology reports confirm that Timor has been poisoned by leurosulphine, a toxin found only in certain igneous rocks from the Trill homeworld.”

  “Do you suspect foul play?” Lenara asks.

  “No. The toxin built in his system over the course of several years. Unless someone had been poisoning him slowly—”

  Ezri crashes through the office door, wearing the same clothes as last night, exclaiming, “That's exactly what happened! The Symbiosis Commission has been poisoning Guardians for centuries.”

  “Where have you been?” Lenara asks.

  “I was accosted by geriatric Vulcans with shock collars and a dead terrorist helped me remember that someone stuck a needle in Dax's brain.”

  Lenara feels Ezri's forehead.

  “I'm fine.” Ezri pushes her hand away. “It's the Guardians you should be worried about. The Caves of Mak'ala are toxic.”

  “Caves?” Dr. Girani asks. “That would explain the exposure.”

  “How long would someone have to be exposed to the chemical for it to rise to the levels Timor has in his system? Thirty years? Forty?”

  “Twenty to thirty years,” Dr. Giarani says. “Depending on weight and health.”

  Lenara covers her mouth in horror. “It all makes sense now.” She pulls a PADD from her bag, booting up the demographic material she collected from the expats on the station. “I've been working with Yla on trying to recruit Guardians to our cause. One of the first things we did was interview Trill on the station to see if any of them had friends or family who worked as Guardians. One of the stranger things we noticed while collecting data was that none of the older Trill were still in contact with friends or siblings who were Guardians. We assumed it was because the Guardians grew more reclusive over the year
s, but. . .” She scans the tables on the PADD. “No known Guardian working in the caves for over thirty years has contacted their family for a very long time.” Lenara swallows hard. “They're dead.”

  Ezri squeezes Lenara's leg. “And the rest will be too if we don't do something.”

  A sensor beeps on Girani's desk. “That's Timor. I need to go. I'll inform you when I have news.”

  –

  A tricorder scan of Vic's reveals no traces of leurosulphine in the holographic Caves of Mak'ala. The symbionts seem to be thriving even without it and whatever dubious, secret health benefits it had to them.

  Lenara sighs, taking a seat in Vic's lounge.

  “You okay?” Vic asks, setting a holographic whiskey on the table in front of her.

  “No, I'm not okay. Although, I don't think 'not okay' even begins to describe the realization that your entire society is built on the exploitation and murder of hundreds of people.” Lenara sips at her drink. It's strong even by holo-standards. “All those people, Vic. How am I supposed to tell their families that they died and no one cared? And that it was all for nothing! We could've had holograms taking care of the symbionts for years.”

  “I see. So, in your brave new world, you'll have holograms as slaves?”

  “No. That's not what I meant at all. . . Do you resent taking—”

  “Not at all. I've given up things willingly for Dax because she's a friend and for you because. . .”

  “What?”

  “Because you're the closest thing I'll ever have to a parent or a god or a progenitor. And I believe in what you two are doing. But I gotta wonder what kinda place someone like me will have in the world if you get what you want. Everything is changing around here. Julian's gone to Cardassia. JFK's gone to the big casino in the sky. . . People come, people go. And I'm waiting from one minute to the next to see if I get turned off.” Vic sits down at the table. “You probably don't realize this because you're practically immortal, but life is addictive.”

  Lenara leans back in her chair, swirling her drink. “Vic, I never imagined that something—someone like you would come out of the holographic recreation deck when I designed it. The creation of sentient life was never a part of my vision. But you're here. Somehow. And you've become a part of the resistance—maybe the most important part—and I'm not going to lose another Guardian. Do you understand?”