by S. D. Perry
“My dear ex-counselor,” Bashir said, grinning, “I’ll have you know that inside that narrow chest beats the heart of a very sensitive young Ferengi.”
“Are we talking about the same Nog?” Ezri asked, working the soap into a lather. “The one who watches me every time I walk past?”
“He’s just appreciating some of your finer qualities. Again, the mark of a sensitive soul.”
Ezri rolled her eyes. Then, she snapped her head around and regarded Bashir carefully. “Hey!” she said. “How did we get off the subject of your promotion?”
“How,” Bashir countered, “did we get off the subject of your not being sure you wanted to go on vacation?”
“I’m packing! I’m packing!” Ezri cried, drying her face.
Bashir smiled to himself, then changed the subject again. “I made Nog promise to turn on Vic’s again as soon as he’s finished.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Ezri said. Bashir followed her into the bedroom as she pulled off her soiled shirt, remembering to take her rank pips off first, and tossed it in a corner of the room. After donning a fresh one, she began to tear open drawers and toss things onto the bed. “Nog would have done it anyway.”
“Vic made me promise before we saved his program. I think he was a little worried what would happen if Empok Nor hadn’t made it through intact.”
“Maybe you should activate him long enough to tell him.” She tossed a pile of undergarments onto the bed.
“Just so I can shut him down again until the work’s finished?” Bashir asked. “No, it’s better this way. And just in case something does go wrong while we’re away, I forwarded a copy of his program to Felix.”
“Good idea,” she said, and to Bashir’s abject horror, she gathered the pile of clothes into a ball, obviously intending to carry it out into the living room, where her bag lay. He wondered if this was part of the Jadzia Dax packing technique Worf had never mentioned. “Where’s your suitcase?” she asked. “I don’t see anything perfect and hermetically sealed lying around here.”
“Back in my quarters.”
“Well, you’d better go get it if you want to make this flight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bashir said, heading for the door. “And may I say that you’ve obviously taken well to command.” The doors closed behind him before he could hear what Ezri said in reply.
There was a man in Bashir’s quarters, gazing out the window.
Standing in the doorway, Bashir felt an absurd desire to say “Excuse me!” and back out of the room before the analytical portion of his brain kicked in. The man was a middle-aged human, medium height and build. He wore a moderately pleasant expression, the kind of bland, neutral smile that Bashir would feel inclined to return while waiting for a turbolift. His dark hair was extremely close-cropped over a well-formed skull. But the man’s most noteworthy characteristic was his eyes, which were a startling emerald green.
“Dr. Bashir,” the man said. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
There was something about the way the man said his name. He continued to collect data—the movements of his facial muscles, the constant readiness of his seemingly relaxed hands, the way he carries his weight squarely on his pelvis—parsed it, then drew conclusions.
Section 31.
The doctor slapped his combadge and spoke quickly. “Bashir to ops, intruder alert. Request armed assistance in my quarters immediately.”
The man’s smile didn’t waver. “I’m sorry, Doctor. Your coworkers aren’t receiving you at the moment. We really can’t afford any interruptions. Lieutenant Dax is still in her quarters and will remain there for at least another twelve minutes or so. She’s having trouble finding a padd she wanted to bring with her. Also, the Wayfarer is experiencing some minor engine problems. Nothing serious, I assure you.” He didn’t offer any explanations, but Bashir didn’t doubt his word. “Now that you know where things stand, I’d like to introduce myself. Please call me Cole. As you’ve no doubt already guessed, I’m affiliated with the organization you call Section 31.”
“You don’t call it that?” Bashir asked.
“I don’t call it anything, Doctor. I’ve found that I rarely need to identify it to anyone who doesn’t already know what it is.”
Bashir moved to a chair and sat down, realizing he had no option but to indulge his unwelcome visitor, at least for now. “I can only assume this isn’t a social call,” he said, trying to maintain the flippant but polite tone.
Cole took a seat opposite Bashir. “Courteous, but direct,” he noted pleasantly. “Sloan noted that in his profile. You’re exactly what I’m looking for.”
“If Sloan mentioned that, then he must have also mentioned that I’m not interested in working with Section 31.”
“In fact,” Cole replied, “he did mention that. But you might change your mind when you’ve heard me out.”
Bashir rose from his chair, his anger beginning to escape the container of his false civility. He knew Cole was probably armed, probably a trained killer, but he didn’t care. All Bashir could think about was lifting the man up by the scruff of his neck and tossing him out of his quarters. Bashir knew it wasn’t the most sensible thought he’d ever had, but it was satisfyingly direct.
“Sit down, Doctor,” Cole said, not raising his voice. Bashir stopped moving, then found himself settling back into his chair. He realized that his fingers and toes were slightly numb and tingling. “You will do me the courtesy of hearing me out.”
Against his will, Bashir nodded.
“Good,” Cole said, then crossed his arms. “You know, of course,” he began, “that you’re not the only genetically enhanced human in the Federation. And I don’t mean only your little circle of friends—Jack, Lauren, Sarina, Patrick, that lot. There are many others, far more than Starfleet Command knows about…or wants to know about, if you want my opinion. One thing I’ve learned in my line of work, Doctor, is that the best place to hide is where your enemies don’t wish to look. Almost four hundred years after the Eugenics Wars, humans are still so terrified of the idea of someone spawning another Khan that they’re afraid to admit to themselves that black-market genetic labs exist on dozens of worlds. What do you think of my assessment?”
“I agree,” Bashir replied, surprised to hear himself voice the long-held but never-spoken opinion. Some kind of psychoactive, he decided. Not only is it making me compliant, but it’s acting as a truth serum. He quickly reviewed the half-dozen compounds he knew of that would have this effect but would also leave him feeling clearheaded. He decided none of them were likely candidates. How did he administer the drug? No hypo. He didn’t touch me…. Aerosol? Yes, that makes sense. Something he sprayed the room with before I got here, something he’s immune to. All of this went on in the analytical portion of his mind while the rest of his attention was fixed on Cole. Despite himself, whatever the drug might be doing, Bashir was interested in what the man was saying.
“And the good news,” Cole continued, “from my perspective, at any rate, is that some of these individuals are very happy to have someone acknowledge their existence. One in particular that I came here to discuss with you is Dr. Ethan Locken. Name mean anything to you?”
Bashir shook his head.
“I’m not really surprised. He wasn’t in Starfleet, isn’t even a researcher despite his astonishing gifts. Doesn’t travel in the same rarefied circles as you do, Doctor. He was, I assume, trying to keep a low profile. Sound familiar?”
Unable to fight the impulse, Bashir nodded.
Cole asked, “Do you think it’s a coincidence that so many of you—the genetically enhanced, I mean—go into medicine? It really doesn’t have anything to do with my…my problem, but I’m curious to hear what you think.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Bashir said. “But don’t make too much of it, either. Think about it—anyone who has been genetically enhanced spent a great deal of time around doctors when they were young. Generally, these are fav
orable impressions, especially if the procedure is successful. If you check the statistics for the general population, I think you’ll find that persons who survive a medical crisis when they’re young have a predilection for going into the medical sciences.”
“Ah,” Cole said. “Very well reasoned, Doctor. Excellent point. I can see that I’m going to enjoy many stimulating conversations like this one in the future.” He pulled out a compact personal data recorder and made a note. “Very good,” he said to himself, then continued, “Where were we?”
“Locken,” Bashir replied. He couldn’t resist the urge to reply to a direct question.
“Ah, yes. Correct—Dr. Locken. He was a pediatrician. Very popular, I’m told. Very well liked. Had a practice on New Beijing. You’ve heard of New Beijing, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Bashir replied tightly. “Of course I have. Everyone has heard of New Beijing. It was a massacre, probably one of the worst of the war, especially when you realize it had no strategic value…”
Cole held up a finger, interrupting. “Not exactly correct, Doctor. Terror always has a strategic value. Remember that.”
Not having been asked a direct question, Bashir could not reply, but he wanted to. Desperately, he wanted to speak, to spew the venom that was clogging his mind and heart.
But Cole wouldn’t have been interested. He was already continuing, reciting facts as if he were reading a dossier. “Dr. Locken had no family on New Beijing and his parents were long dead, but he had friends and he had colleagues, and, oh, he had patients. You might have heard the official death toll—five thousand human colonists, all civilians—but it was actually higher than that. Much higher.
“As you might expect, after surviving an ordeal like that, Dr. Locken was somewhat more receptive to our invitation than you’ve been. He understood the need for an organization like ours in a hostile universe. If only more people possessed his clarity of perception, then perhaps catastrophes like New Beijing might not have occurred.”
“Wait,” Bashir said, the word ragged, but comprehensible. “I have a question.” It was a brutal struggle to speak without being spoken to, but Bashir could feel the effects of the psychoactive beginning to wane.
Cole’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. Obviously, he had been expecting the drug to work longer, but he didn’t object to Bashir asking his question.
“Did you—did Section 31—know about the plan to attack New Beijing in advance?”
Cole lifted a finger to his upper lip, patted it several times, then said, “You know, Doctor, I’m not sure. I’m afraid none of us knows everything everyone else in the organization knows. Security measure, you understand. It certainly sounds like the sort of thing we would hear about long before Starfleet Intelligence. But let’s assume we did. What difference would it have made? Enlighten me, sir.”
“You could have told someone,” Bashir hissed between clenched teeth. “You could have told me.…”
“And you would have done what, precisely? At the height of the Dominion War, would you have tried to convince Captain Sisko or Admiral Ross to have forces reassigned to New Beijing? Say, for example, an Excelsior-class starship and a detachment of Starfleet ground troops? What would that have accomplished? The planet was attacked by two regiments of Jem’Hadar soldiers. The starship would have been destroyed, our troops killed, and all those civilians would have died anyway.”
Cole leaned forward, warming to his topic. “Oh, and consider this—maybe the Starfleet forces in this hypothetical scenario were needed someplace where they might have done some good, something crucial. Perhaps they’d have been taken from the force that was successfully repelling the attack on Rigel at that time, and perhaps as a consequence the entire Rigel system would have fallen. Think about it, Doctor: Maybe what happened to New Beijing was the best possible outcome that we could have expected.”
Bashir’s anger was so intense that he wondered why his eyes weren’t boiling like two eggs in their sockets. “That,” he snapped, “is the most specious, spurious, fatuous sort of sociopathic double-talk I’ve ever heard! It’s exactly that sort of logic that allows people like you to maintain the illusion that what you’re doing has some sort of intrinsic value. It’s insanity, Mister Cole. People died—”
Cole rose, a visual cue that had another immediate and involuntary effect on Bashir: he stopped speaking.
“First, Doctor,” Cole said in cool and collected tones, “never use the word ‘insanity’ unless you know precisely what you’re talking about. It’s an imprecise word. Second, and I wouldn’t have thought you’d need me to tell you this, but people die all the time. It’s simply a question of how many, who they are, and, sometimes, how they died. That’s what my colleagues and I try to do: keep the numbers as small as possible, make sure the right ones don’t die, and keep the suffering to a minimum. It isn’t easy work, but we do the best we can. You yourself have benefited from some of our efforts, so please be very careful about who you’re condemning today.”
Bashir’s eyes narrowed. He believes it; he believes every word that he’s saying. And worse, Bashir suspected that what he was saying might even be true.
Cole strolled over to the mantel jutting out of a nearby wall. He bent to study a small hologram of Bashir’s parents, then gave a quizzical glance to the larger holo of the Deep Space Niners taken in Quark’s bar after their triumphant defeat at the hands of the T’Kumbra Logicians. Shaking his head, Cole resumed his tale: “After Dr. Locken agreed to assist us, he underwent training to become an agent. Or, to be more accurate, he indulged us as we took him through our program. Not surprisingly, considering his background, he already knew almost everything we could teach him about how to go unnoticed when he desired. I believe he even taught our trainers a few things.” He looked over at Bashir. “You could probably teach them a few things, too, now that I think of it.
“And then, just in the last days of the war, we found him a mission. We flattered ourselves, believing it was the perfect mission.” Cole grinned once more, but there was no real merriment in it. “So, of course,” Cole said, “Locken betrayed us.”
Chapter Three
Several seconds ticked past during which, Bashir suspected, he was supposed to offer a comment. He decided to be spiteful, and so, finally, Cole continued. “We discovered a Jem’Hadar hatchery on a planet called Sindorin. Heard of it?”
“No.”
“A class-M world in the Badlands. Very unusual for that region with the high concentration of ambient plasma energy. We have no idea when the hatchery was established; not even the Cardassians knew about it. Evidence suggests that the Dominion didn’t quite manage to bring it fully online. If they had, that last offensive on Cardassia might have gone a little differently. Something to think about late at night, isn’t it, Doctor? Calculate how many more ships and soldiers the Dominion needed to turn the tide of that battle.”
“It was Odo who ended the war,” Bashir said. “He convinced the Founder that the Federation and its allies weren’t a threat to the Dominion. He gave them the cure to your damn virus and prevented the genocide your organization sought to achieve.”
“Hm, yes,” Cole said. “That’s certainly an interesting interpretation of events.”
“You have another?”
“We’re off topic, Doctor. As I was saying, the hatchery we found was abandoned and undefended. Locken’s mission was simplicity itself: Tell us whether the hatchery DNA sequencers could be adjusted so that the Jem’Hadar would be loyal to us.”
Bashir said, “You bloody fools.”
“A comment, Doctor?” Cole asked. “An imprecation?”
“We just finished fighting a war against a totalitarian power that callously used a genetically engineered army of slave soldiers as cannon fodder. How could you think for even a moment that anyone in the Federation—in the quadrant—would tolerate you employing the same methods? It violates every principle that millions of Starfleet officers, Klingons, and Romulans sacrificed
their lives to protect.”
Cole regarded Bashir for several seconds, then slowly raised his hands and clapped them together half a dozen times. “Bravo, Doctor,” he said. “I am impressed. You do have a flair for oratory.” Cole folded his arms over his chest. “Now, step down off your soapbox and allow me to guide you through a few possibilities you might not have considered. Give me the benefit of your superior intellect and tell me who you deduce will be the group the Federation will be facing in the next war.”
Bashir sighed. He had lain awake too many nights calculating exactly these variables. “It’s difficult to say precisely because of all the factors involved. Unless Chancellor Martok can solidify his power base in the next six months, the peace between the Klingons and Romulans will likely crumble. If they go to war the victor will likely attack the Federation next. The Breen will be watching our borders, too, making raids, checking for vulnerable areas. From the Project Pathfinder database, we know that there are several species in the Delta Quadrant that may be threats in the near future: the Hirogen, Species 8472, the Srivani, the Vaadwaur…”
Cole paced the floor, nodding his approval with each of Bashir’s observations. “Very good, Doctor. Excellent analysis. I particularly approve of your read of the Delta Quadrant situation. Many potential threats there. You obviously have been keeping up on current events.”
“Admiral Ross has been using some of us here as a sounding board,” Bashir said dryly.
“Yes,” Cole said. “I can see why. You all have lived through unique situations, haven’t you? But you’re leaving something out, I think, the most obvious…”
Bashir was silent for several seconds, but then relented. “The Borg.”
“The Borg?” Cole said. “Interesting. We’ve beaten them, you know? Twice here and at least once in the Delta Quadrant…if you believe the Pathfinder reports. But you think the Borg is the number-one threat. Why is that?”
“Because they’re relentless,” Bashir said. “Because we still don’t know how many there are. Because the fact that we beat them makes us all the more interesting to them, that much more worth assimilating. Because I think they recognize something in us that they might have been themselves once and want to exterminate it. If we survive, if we thrive, it means that some decision they made long, long ago was the wrong one. Because, I think, for all their claims of being emotionless, I think they hate us.”
