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

by ROVER MARIE TOWLE

  “Thanks, Garak.”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  The vidscreen clicks off and Lenara mutters, “What the hell has been going on on Cardassia?”

  —

  Ezri stands alone on Vic’s stage (all shows are indefinitely cancelled), staring down at every member of the resistance: Lenara, Bejal in infirmary cotton, Trivora and the other children already dressed for bed and fidgeting in their parents’ arms. She closes her eyes and imagines, not what Jadzia or Curzon or any of the other hosts would do in this situation, but what Benjamin would say right now.

  She opens her eyes, the lights of the bar blurred from tears.

  “The Symbiosis Commission is coming here. Tomorrow. They know we’re raising symbionts and they’re coming to take them back.”

  The audience dissolves into murmurs and shouts.

  “Listen!” Lenara shouts over them.

  “I’m going to ask more—” The audience shushes at Ezri’s firm tone. “I’m going to ask more of you than I have any right to. We can’t let the Symbiosis Commission get their hands on the symbionts, because every symbiont that goes back to the Caves of Mak’ala is a death sentence for a Guardian—our friends, our family, our people. To protect them, I need you to be willing to do whatever is necessary to keep the symbionts from falling into the Commission’s hands. I’m not going to lie to you: this could mean going to jail, or getting injured, or even giving up your life. None of us want it to come to that, but if the Symbiosis Commission doesn’t give us the option, we need to push back. Hard.

  “Now is the time for us to take control of our destinies and the future of our people. This is the moment when you decide whether you want to be an outcast—or an avenger. Come with me tomorrow, and we become an army. I can’t guarantee that we will win the first battle, or even the second, but we will win the war.

  “Because we have the one thing the Symbiosis Commission will never have: Deep Space Nine. The Bajoran people have welcomed us here, allowed us to make this station our home, our refuge, our sanctuary from the Symbiosis Commission. Now we’ve brought them here and it looks utterly hopeless. The Commission has power, a private security agency, diplomatic sway with the Federation. All we have are the odds against us and this station beneath our feet. But, as any Bajoran will tell you, those two things are enough to bring an empire to its knees.

  “Who’s ready to fight?”

  —

  Lenara and Ezri lie sleepless in bed for the second hour in a row, running through their go-to bedtime rituals: sex, counting Trill farm animals, wrapping themselves in blankets like a living hasperat.

  Ezri kicks off her tightly-wrapped covers. “I don’t think swaddling works after the age of three-hundred.”

  Lenara sighs. “Do you want to try highlights-lowlights?”

  “I guess. You start.”

  “My highlight for the day is both symbionts unexpectedly laying eggs. My lowlight is both symbionts slowly starting to die after laying eggs. Your turn.”

  “Okay. My highlight is nearly everyone deciding to stay and fight tomorrow. And my lowlight is the horrific anxiety about their blood possibly being on my hands tomorrow.”

  Lenara peels back her blankets, pulling Ezri to her chest. “Promise me you won’t die tomorrow,” she murmurs into Ezri’s hair.

  “I won’t. Promise me you won’t die tomorrow. . . or four months from now turn into a hyper-critical jerk obsessed with fixing me?”

  “I won’t?”

  Ezri glances up at Lenara. “Sorry, that’s the way things turned out last time I had this conversation. I just wanted to cover all my bases.”

  Lenara chuckles softly, holding Ezri close. Ezri’s grip on her is almost painfully tight.

  They stay like that until morning.

  Chapter 16: We Ain't Come This Far to Lose

  “Any luck reaching Nulat?” Garak asks.

  “No.” Julian comes hopping out of the bedroom on one foot, struggling to pull up his left trouser leg. “She’s not answering her comm. What about Leeta?”

  “I don’t think she was pleased to hear from me this early, but she agreed to drop Nulat off at Deep Space Nine.”

  “Good.” Julian fastens up his trousers. “Now we just have to find her.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Garak calls over his shoulder as he heads into the bedroom.

  “Yesterday morning.” Julian sits on the edge of the sofa to put on his shoes. “She went off on her own to figure out what was going on with the transporter.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her since?” Garak yells from the bedroom.

  “No. I suppose I should’ve checked in with her, but I got a little sidetracked.” Speaking off. . . “If you stumble across my underpants in there, just put them in a safe place.”

  “If safe places remained on Cardassia, I assure you that you and your underpants would be in one of them.”

  Shoes on and smirking, Julian pulls on his shirt, getting caught only once in the cooling mesh interior (a record for him). When he manages to get his head through the right hole (with significant violence done to his hairdo), Garak is standing in front of him looking just as prim and perfectly-coiffed as always.

  “How—how do you do that?” Julian stammers. “You were in there for two minutes!”

  “A tailor never reveals his secrets.” Garak pats Julian on the shoulder, straightening his collar. “Can you think of anyone who would know where Nulat is?”

  “Maybe Alexander.” Julian snaps his fingers. “And his comm should be on.”

  Garak gazes out the window at the pre-dawn sky. “Even at this hour?”

  “He’s a midwife; he keeps it on all the time in case someone goes into labor.” Julian picks up his comm. “Bashir to Rozhenko.”

  “Rozhenko here,” Alexander grumbles in the tone of voice entirely unique to teenagers woken before noon.

  “Do you happen to know where Nulat is?”

  “No, last time I saw her, she was at a pub near the dorms, drinking with some revolutionaries.”

  “And you left her there?”

  “What was I supposed to do? She’s like three times my age.”

  “Could you knock on her door? I need to speak to her immediately.”

  “Sorry.” Alexander yawns. “I’m not at the dorms.”

  Julian faintly hears a woman’s voice in the background. “Oh, no. Lauren didn’t convince you to sleep with her again, did she?”

  “No, I’m staying with my patient.”

  “Where?”

  “Under a bridge.” Julian really should not be left responsible for his friends’ sons. “There’s a whole camp of us getting ready to march on the imperial plaza.”

  “Your patient is going marching? She’s four months pregnant!”

  “Exercise is very good for late-term Cardassians. It keeps blood flowing to the cervix.”

  “Fine. Just be safe. Comm me every hour.”

  “You, too.”

  “Bashir out.” Julian pins his volunteer commbadge to his collar. “I’ll have to find her myself.”

  “Be safe.”

  “You, too. Comm me every half hour.”

  “Every half-hour. Aren’t I special?”

  “Yes.” Julian kisses Garak’s forehead. “You.” And then the tip of his nose. “Are.” And finally his lips.

  —

  “Let’s go over this one more time,” Ezri says to the crowd assembled in Vic’s. “We have Trill placed all over the station as decoys. The Commission doesn’t know the symbionts are in here, so we don’t want to draw attention to Quark’s by lining up outside. At least not yet. The only people I want in and around Quark’s are my telepaths, who will be working in rotating shifts, using that suggestion-planting trick our Vulcan friend taught you to divert the Commission from Quark’s for as long as possible.

  “For the people assigned to habitat ring.” Ezri points to the spot on the map they drew up (in crayon—the children wan
ted to pitch in somehow). “As soon as the Commission inspects your area, head down to the Promenade, but don’t go to Quark’s until you get the call from Lenara. We’ll need all hands on holodeck then.”

  —

  Garak waits for Nulat at the shuttle bay just as Julian asked—although he has no reason why Julian would make such a request. He can make an educated guess when he sees Nulat come down the street wearing a pair of comically large sunglasses from her act, Julian trailing behind with his medical kit.

  No.

  “Hey.” Nulat waves. “I fell asleep on my comm.” She points to the comm-shaped imprint on her forward.

  “Hey.” Julian purses his lips. “Thanks for meeting me here. I couldn’t tell you on the comm and I had to see you before—”

  “Before?” Garak asks pointedly.

  Julian steps closer, ducking his head so that it almost rests on Garak’s shoulder. “The detox hypo I gave Nulat lowered her isoboramine levels. She needs a benzocyatizine supplement every five minutes to get them back to acceptable levels before going into surgery.”

  “And you have benzocyatizine in your medkit?”

  “No. . . but I have the ingredients I need to synthesize it on the way to Deep Space Nine.” He pauses. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to go.”

  “Then don’t!” Garak hisses.

  “I have to. If I hadn’t jumped the gun and gave Nulat a human anti-tox, she wouldn’t be in this position. I have to make this right. She’s wanted to be joined since she was a little girl. I can’t let her dream, and the symbiont, die because I made a rookie mistake.”

  Garak closes his eyes, gritting his teeth. This is what he gets for falling in love with an honorable man. (Although, he supposes he shouldn’t judge Julian’s idealism too harshly; Garak was ready and willing to kill Julian and himself to save Cardassia from the Dominion.)

  “Promise me you’ll come back,” Garak whispers.

  “Promise me you’ll be be here when I do,” Julian replies, his voice tight in his throat.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Keep them safe. Jack and the others. Take care of each other until I get back. Please.”

  Garak nods.

  Julian reaches for him but freezes, looking around the shuttle terminal at the heavy police presence. He lowers his hand. “Garak. . .”

  Garak surges forward, wrapping his arms around Julian, pulling his head down into a kiss. Stunned only for a moment, Julian grips Garak in a crushing embrace, deepening the kiss.

  When they pull apart, Julian whispers into Garak’s mouth, “Please, don’t die.”

  —

  Lenara takes her seat at what they’ve dubbed “command central”: really, several old computer consoles wheeled into Vic’s under the cover of station’s night. From there, she can see almost the entire station with monitors displaying video from the station’s security cameras (a quick call to the Grand Nagus helped them hack into the system; Quark assures them that the security footage was used for marketing purposes alone) and audio/visual feeds from the inconspicuous cameras worn by resistance members and their allies.

  Right now, she’s monitoring the lapel camera affixed to a Bajoran militiaman’s commbadge as he awaits the docking of the Symbiosis Commission’s vessel. (The Bajoran, an older gentleman named Furo Tulat, agreed to wear the camera with very little convincing.

  “Anything for Dax,” he said, winking at Ezri.

  Ezri explained later, “We kind of had a thing a few years back.”

  “Really?” Lenara raises an eyebrow. “Him and Jadzia?”

  “Him and Curzon.”)

  Lenara watches as Tabora Dek, head of the Symbiosis Commission, steps onto the station, flanked by two Trill who Lenara doesn’t recognize wearing Commission insignia, and followed by a motley crew of aliens wearing black jumpsuits.

  Lenara curses in Trill.

  “What’s up, buttercup?” Vic asks, coming up behind her.

  “The Commission brought the Hera’jato with them.”

  “Are those bodyguards?”

  “Worse. A private security force sub-contracted by the Commission to keep order. Since they’re private citizens of non-Federation planets, they don’t have to play by the same rules as law enforcement.”

  “Oh, like Pinkertons sent out to do Carnegie’s dirty work.”

  Lenara understands less than half of the nouns in that sentence, but distraction has her nodding, “Yes, exactly.”

  “You know,” Vic says, sitting on the edge of Lenara’s desk, “the real Pinkertons would send in agents to spy on unions or even sabotage them from the inside.”

  That gets Lenara’s full attention. “That would devastate us. We’d be finished.” She shakes her head. “It’s impossible. You and Sybok read everyone for disloyalty.”

  “But who read Sybok?”

  “Do you have any reason to doubt him—besides his past life as a terrorist cult leader?”

  “That’s not enough?”

  “Not anymo—” Lenara’s comm chirps. “Phantom.”

  “It’s Jake. I think something’s seriously wrong. Kasidy’s missing,” Jake says.

  “See,” Vic says.

  “What do you mean ‘missing?’”

  “I mean, I can’t find her anywhere. She’s not answering her comm.”

  “Maybe she’s asleep. Have you checked her room?”

  “Yes! That was the first spot I looked. She’s not there and the whole place is trashed! There’s stuff thrown all over the place, like someone came in looking for something.”

  The blood drains from Lenara’s face. The Hera’jato have been on the station longer than she thought.

  “Do you think something could have happened to her?” Jake asks.

  —

  Garak watches Julian and Nulat’s shuttle grow smaller and smaller until it is just a dot being swallowed up by the Nagal cruiser’s tractor beam. Around him, the shuttle terminal crackles with life—the racing heartbeat of a city on the move: the frenzied back-and-forth of the bourgeoisie negotiating transport off-planet; the excited, defiant chatter in northern accents; the unmistakable crack of police batons meeting insubordinate skulls.

  Once upon a time, Garak would have found the chaos an exciting (if challenging) work environment. So many secrets spill from lips thought unheard in the rabble of a teeming crowd. Now, the noise agitates him like sonic walls closing in. Better to run than to stay; find a safe place to weather the storm and protect his assets.

  Garak waits to ensure that Leeta’s ship warps out of sight safely, whisking Julian and Nulat away with it, before beginning the hike back to his car. He hopes it’s still there; walking these streets as a gul would not be pleasant. Almost at the entrance gates of the shuttle terminal, Garak can see his car glimmering in the sun on the crest of a hill, sighing in relief.

  “Garak!” a female voice cuts across the crowd. “Garak!”

  Knowing the voice to be familiar, but unable to assign a name to it, Garak debates the merits of acknowledging her call. If she wanted him dead, he would be (or she would be, more likely). However, broadcasting his identity to the entire terminal may prove just as fatal.

  Garak keeps walking.

  The sound of another voice—one he could never forget—stops him in his tracks. He turns around. “Morn! What are you doing here?”

  Morn says nothing, pointing back with his thumb to the woman struggling to keep up with him, the weight of pregnancy slowing her stride to a waddle.

  Kasidy Yates-Sisko, wife of the Emissary, and the Emissary’s unborn child. Here. On Cardassia.

  Dangerous on any day, but Kasidy chose today.

  Garak plasters a smile to his face. “Captain Yates-Sisko, what in the great void of space are you doing here?”

  Kasidy holds up her index finger, requesting a moment to catch her breath. “Whew.” She fans herself. “I had a dream last night telling me to come here.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah. What’s w
rong with that?”

  “Several things, the first of which being that one should not mistake one’s unconscious fantasies for a vacation itinerary.”

  “You know, everyone has been telling me to follow my instincts, ‘listen to my pah,’ and as soon as I do—”

  “Kasidy,” he says sharply. “You need to leave now. You are not safe here.” He leans in closer. “None of us are safe here.”

  Kasidy looks around the terminal, flinching slightly as a nightstick comes down on an old woman’s head. “You might be right about that.” She looks to Morn. “Let’s go home.”

  Morn frowns, opening his mouth to say something, but an announcement from the terminal authority cuts him off.

  “All inbound and outbound shuttle flights have been suspended for the remainder of the day due to scheduled maintenance. Again: all inbound and outbound shuttle flights have been cancelled due to scheduled maintenance. We advise you to return to your homes, lock your doors and windows, and wait for the maintenance to pass.”

  What was a manageable (if utterly un-Cardassian) level of chaos erupts into all-out panic as the crowd scatters, running for safety, screaming for loved ones, dodging swinging nightsticks.

  Garak pushes Kasidy and Morn out of the terminal’s entrance, saving them from a stampede of Cardassians desperate to get off the streets.

  “Can you beam up to your ship?” Garak shouts over the din.

  Kasidy shakes her head. “The Xhosa’s transporter is too old for remote transport.”

  “Damn.” Garak cranes his neck around the terminal’s gateway, seeing his hovercar still in tact. “We need to get you some place safe. Or safer, at least. I have a car parked about four blocks from here up on a hill. Do you think you can make it that far?”

  Kasidy eyes the throngs of people running out of the terminal. “Not before getting trampled.”

  “Morn, do you think you’re—”

  Morn is, as always, one step ahead. He positions himself behind Kasidy, looking to her for permission before picking her up.

  “Promise me you won’t drop me,” Kasidy says.

  Morn crosses his heart.

  “Fine. Don’t hurt yourself.”