Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  “You’ve always been interested in the arts?” Bashir asked.

  “Interested? Well, yes, I suppose, ever since the enhancement procedure, though I’ve only recently put my hand to anything. I was always afraid of drawing too much attention to myself. Being too good at too many things…it seemed dangerous. It was all right to be a good doctor, but only because I always tried to look like I was working very hard at it. Do you know what I mean?”

  Bashir nodded, remembering the nights in the med-school library when he had to pretend to read the same page over and over again even after he had memorized an entire textbook.

  “I suppose,” Locken continued, “if I had received some encouragement from my parents, it might have been different, but they were always so concerned about my keeping the treatments a secret. It was difficult; they were so frightened of what might happen to them, though they never seemed to think very much about what I might be going through.”

  Bashir paused to take a closer look at a holographic sculpture, though it wasn’t long before he realized he wasn’t really seeing it. Instead, he was thinking about a lecture he had received from his father when he was thirteen about letting the other boys win in games sometimes, about the need to give the wrong answers on tests sometimes, about not letting anyone know. “The Secret Life of Jules Bashir,” he had come to label it in his own head. And now here he was speaking to someone who understood, really understood.

  “But I decided,” Locken said, “to try to make the best of things, to create a meaningful life for myself. After I finished medical school, I accepted a position at the New Beijing Pediatric Center. They were doing some very interesting work in correcting prenatal microcellular damage. Did you ever read any of it?”

  Bashir nodded absently. “A little,” he said. “But I don’t have much use for obstetrics on DS9. It isn’t that kind of place.”

  Locken smiled as if he knew better. “I’m sure Colonel Kira and Captain Yates would beg to differ. Oh, and let’s not forget Lieutenant Vilix’pran. No matter what else I accomplish here, I can safely say that the best work I ever did was back on New Beijing. We helped mothers bring new lives into the world…”

  Bashir glanced at Ezri and watched her roll her eyes.

  Locken had not missed it, either. “Mock if you will, Lieutenant,” he said. “But one of the reasons settlers came to New Beijing was because of the work we did at the center. I treated more than a couple of Trill there, which means I have to ask myself why they didn’t find what they needed at home. Do you know?”

  Ezri didn’t respond.

  “I thought so,” he said, and Bashir had to wonder at the change in his tone. Perhaps the shyness and humility were a little more calculated than he had thought. Or perhaps the differences in his personality existed side by side…?

  “And I’d still be there,” Locken continued, his voice rising. “If it weren’t for the damned war. Starfleet’s war.”

  “Starfleet didn’t start the war,” Ezri retorted.

  “Or the Dominion’s war,” Locken countered. “Or the Romulans’ war or the Breen’s war. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is it came to New Beijing and we didn’t want it. We didn’t deserve it, but there it was.”

  “Do you know why the Dominion invaded New Beijing?” Bashir asked, trying to break some of the tension, but keep Locken talking. “Starfleet could never make sense of it.”

  “Why?” Locken repeated, his bitterness growing. “Apparently it was all a mistake. They’d been misinformed.”

  Bashir frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Dominion apparently had erroneous intelligence that we were developing biogenic weapons on New Beijing. At one point while I was hiding from them, I managed to capture one of their Vorta. We…spoke, and he explained that they had learned we were developing a pathogen that would be effective against the Jem’Hadar. I didn’t know this at the time, but I could tell them today that the idea is ludicrous. Any pathogen potent enough to kill a Jem’Hadar couldn’t be released into a planetary environment without killing anything else it came into contact with.”

  “I agree,” Bashir said.

  “Ah, yes,” Locken replied. “You know whereof I speak, don’t you? You were able to observe a Jem’Hadar go from newborn to full adult a few years back, so you have a fairly complete genetic sample, don’t you? Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “The Founders are extraordinary genetic engineers,” Bashir said, but thought, He doesn’t know about Taran’atar. That means he and Ro are still free.

  Locken went on, “Remind me to show you some notes I’ve been developing for a paper suggesting the possibility that the Founders were once solids themselves and their current state is the result of genetic engineering.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Bashir said. “Later. Continue with your story.”

  Locken stopped in front of a large window and stared out unseeingly into the night. They were on the second or third story, Bashir saw, overlooking a short, muddy lawn, and the lights in the corridor were low, so most of the illumination came from a pair of lampposts outside at the perimeter of the fence. “It was a nightmare,” Locken said, his voice coming harsh and raspy. “The colony’s automatic defenses went down and Starfleet was spread too thin. They couldn’t—or wouldn’t—send anyone.”

  “If they could have, they would have,” Bashir said. “You must realize that.”

  Locken sneered, but did not respond to Bashir’s claim. “And then the Jem’Hadar began beaming down,” he continued. “They were everywhere—in homes, offices, clinics, parks, in the children’s ward…. There was no warning, no request for surrender. They weren’t an occupying army—they were butchers. Have you ever seen Jem’Hadar in combat? I don’t mean against Starfleet or Klingon troops. Have you ever seen them tear into a civilian population?”

  “No,” Bashir said, his voice catching in his throat. “No, I haven’t. And I never want to.”

  “No,” Locken agreed, shaking his head. “You never do. And if I have my way, you never will. Not you or anyone else.”

  “How did you survive?” Dax asked.

  Locken turned toward her, seemingly surprised to find she was still there. After a lingering pause, he answered, “I kept my head, Lieutenant. I hid when I could hide, fought when I had to fight.”

  “Against Jem’Hadar?”

  “Jem’Hadar are mortal. They can be killed if you know where to strike them. One of the things I learned on New Beijing is that I can deal death quite efficiently when I must.”

  I know that feeling too, Bashir thought.

  “But you weren’t able to help any of the others?” Ezri asked. “Your colleagues? Your patients?”

  Cocking his head to one side, Locken stroked his eyebrow thoughtfully and said in his mildest tone, “You know, Lieutenant, it strikes me that you’ve been attempting to sow some sort of discord. I wish you’d stop. It’s really rather annoying and stands no chance of succeeding. But to answer your question, by the time I had recovered from the shock of the initial attack, my patients and my colleagues were all dead. They had a weapons platform in orbit.”

  “Like the one that shot us down,” Bashir observed.

  “Yes,” Locken said. “Like that one. By the way, you wouldn’t have had a problem approaching Sindorin if you had only announced yourselves sooner. You were planning on announcing yourselves, weren’t you?”

  “Right after we fired the quantum torpedoes,” she said.

  “Ezri,” Bashir said through gritted teeth. “I think that’s enough for now.” She didn’t respond out loud, only glared at him.

  “Yes, I quite agree,” Locken said. “Would you like to see the rest of the facility?”

  “All right,” Bashir said. “And I’d like to hear some more about how Section 31 approached you. I have to confess I’m a little surprised you cooperated with them as long as you did.”

  “I cooperated with them as long as it suited me,” Locken
said, turning down a short corridor to stop before a pair of large, utilitarian double doors. “This leads to the Jem’Hadar barracks,” he explained, laying his palm on an identity reader. “They won’t be able to see us where we’ll be, but try not to make too much noise anyway. There are some young ones in here and they tend to be…irritable.” The ID reader pinged and the doors swung open slowly, revealing a long dark corridor. Bashir glanced at Ezri, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Bashir said. “You were saying about Section 31—”

  “I wasn’t,” Locken replied, “but since you seem to want to hear it anyway…” He waited for the doors to close, then pulled out his control unit again and pointed it at a row of black glass panels that made up one long wall of the corridor. At his touch, the entire wall lightened to transparency. “After the Dominion forces left New Beijing,” Locken explained, “Federation relief teams arrived to help the survivors, to scrape dirt over the wreckage and to bury the dead. When they realized who I was, they asked me to stay on and help.” He shrugged. “What could I say? Part of me desperately wanted to leave, but it was my home, so I stayed. I became friends with another one of the workers, a woman named Merra. We often found ourselves working on the same teams. Somewhere along the line, I realized she had been arranging that.”

  “She was a Section 31 agent,” Bashir said.

  “Of course,” Locken agreed. “But she was also my friend. I still miss her.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Sometime after the last of the dead were interred, Merra told me about Section 31—her version of what it was, at least—and told me that they had asked her to watch me, to learn about me. Merra was, I think, a true acolyte. She fervently believed in Section 31’s mission and her superiors must have thought she could transfer her faith to me.”

  “Did she?”

  Locken smiled. “I agreed,” he said slowly, “that there needs to be a single, intelligent, unifying force organizing the quadrant. Section 31, by its very nature, cannot be that force, but I admire the organization, their ability to muster resources. I learned a lot from them.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Bashir said. “Where are the agents who accompanied you here? I haven’t seen any other humans.”

  “My former colleagues are now my guests,” he said. “If you’d like to meet them later, I’d be happy to arrange it. I’m not a murderer, Julian.”

  “Not a murderer?” Ezri flared. “What about the crew of that Romulan ship? That wasn’t murder?”

  Locken turned on her, his face flushed. “That was war, Lieutenant,” he said. “The first volley in a new war that will bring about a permanent peace.”

  “That wasn’t war,” Ezri hissed. “In war, the victor takes prisoners when they’ve defeated an enemy. What I saw was a total and complete disregard for any universally recognized rules and conventions. What I saw was sadism.”

  “Those are your rules and conventions, Lieutenant,” Locken said. “Your limited concept of right and wrong. I’ve moved beyond your outmoded ethics. I see the universe as it really is and I see my place in it. Being the limited creature you are, you couldn’t comprehend what I’m saying, but Julian understands.” He spun back to face Bashir. “Don’t you, Julian?”

  Bashir was shocked by the transformation he had just witnessed. Until now, Locken had come across as traumatized, even deluded, but now here was the spark of megalomania that lay at the core of the neo-Khan’s recent actions. Locken and Ezri stared at him as if he were about to judge the value of their arguments. The pulse of the world seemed to slow as the seconds ticked past, until Bashir finally said, “I think I’d like to see the rest of the facility.” Dax just stared at him. And Locken, once again full of courtesy and goodwill, gestured toward the observation windows.

  “Take a look,” he said. “I think you’ll enjoy this.”

  They were looking down through the transparent ceiling into a series of large chambers. In the room immediately below them, a trio of adult Jem’Hadar was drilling a group of youngsters in weaponry. “I like to keep the birth groups together whenever possible,” Locken explained. “It promotes unity.”

  The youths appeared to be about twelve or thirteen, which meant, Bashir knew, that they were probably not more than two days old. Within the week, they would be adults, battle-ready and disciplined. That was not quite the case today, however; when one of the instructors handed a student a short sword, the boy lifted it over his head and would have brought it crashing down on the head of his “brother” if the instructor had not cuffed him in the mouth.

  “You haven’t begun to give those six ketracel-white yet, have you?” Bashir asked.

  “No, not yet,” Locken said. “My experiments show that if you give it to them too soon, it makes them harder to handle. Too late and they sometimes develop a histochemical response, and die.”

  “An allergic reaction?” Bashir asked, interested despite himself.

  “A protein-inhibitor reaction. I suspect it has something to do with my formula for ketracel-white. The only sample I had to work with when I was duplicating the biochemistry was a little old, so I suspect something degraded. I’ll show you my data logs later. You’ve done some work in that, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Not the real thing.” Bashir was impressed. Locken had just casually—perhaps too casually—revealed that he had learned to synthesize ketracel-white, a problem that had eluded some of the best minds in the Federation.

  “Another peculiarity: My Jem’Hadar go through white much faster than the Dominion’s Jem’Hadar did,” Locken continued. “They need to replenish as often as six times a day. Naturally I’ve dispensed with ritualizing the administration of white. I let my troops control their own intake. Pipes from the distillery actually lead directly to dispensers in the barracks.

  “At first, I wasn’t sure I understood why the Founders decided to create a species with a biochemical dependence. It seemed counterintuitive, especially since the Jem’Hadar were genetically programmed to think of them as akin to gods. But then, I began to see the sense of it. In addition to nourishing them, the ketracel-white also relieves them of any unnecessary concepts of guilt or innocence. In their view, there is only order or disorder. It is a very…liberating perspective.”

  “I’d imagine it is,” Dax remarked, unable to help herself. “It enables one to justify almost anything.”

  Locken ignored the gibe, indicating with a wave of his hand that they were to continue down the narrow corridor. The second chamber, much larger than the first, was a shipbuilding bay and contained the fully functional composite ships that had attacked the runabout, plus four others in various stages of construction.

  “We’ve turned necessity into a virtue,” Locken said, indicating the ships. “When we began, all I had was the ship we came here in. I used it to salvage wrecks littering the area, then studied the components until I was able to piece together a working fighter craft.”

  “You assembled a high-performance fighter by studying the components?” Bashir asked, impressed despite himself. “But none of the ships had the same computer systems, or structural systems, or anything. Something like that shouldn’t have been possible.”

  Locken gave a not entirely convincing shrug. “It was an interesting challenge, I’ll admit that. But once I devised the proper algorithms, well, not so much a problem.”

  More of the false modesty, Bashir thought. I begin to perceive a pattern.

  “You didn’t have any use for our runabout?” Dax asked pointedly, noticing that it wasn’t in the bay.

  “Oh, I plan to put it to excellent use, Lieutenant,” Locken said, favoring her with a supremely confident smile. “In time. But there’s no hurry. It’ll keep very nicely where you set it down until I’m ready to get to it. Besides, I didn’t want it close enough to serve as a temptation for either of you.”

  The next chamber, smaller than the previous two, was a dimly lit lab.
The doorframe, Bashir noted, glowed faintly blue in the low light. “This is where I manufacture my ketracel-white.”

  “A forcefield on the doors,” Ezri said. She had evidently noticed the blue glow, too. “You don’t trust in your own godhead?”

  “I’m a very cautious individual,” said Locken, “and though I don’t think my Jem’Hadar would ever succumb to the temptation to break in, better to be safe than sorry. But this is a very dull stop on the tour. Come see the last chamber. This is where things get interesting.”

  Looking down into the chamber, Bashir felt his gorge rise and his stomach drop. There was nothing at all interesting about what was below them unless you could consider hell an interesting place.

  It was a Jem’Hadar factory.

  Bashir knew that he should use the word “hatchery” or “crèche” or something that could justifiably be applied to living organisms, but there was nothing about the place that hinted at anything resembling an organic process. It was a production line. At the center of the room was a machine that vaguely resembled the incubation chamber Quark had discovered among some ship wreckage he’d purchased several years ago, except much, much larger. Perhaps the unit Bashir had studied back on the station had once been part of a larger machine, or, just as likely, Locken had improved on the Dominion design.

  “Look over there,” Locken said, proudly pointing at a large translucent tube attached to the underside of the incubator. “There’s a pupa coming through now.”

  Bashir watched as an oblong blob about the size of a soccer ball slid into the tube. Then, the tube contracted spasmodically, each convulsion pushing the shadow a little farther along. When the small bundle reached the end of the tube, it slipped out into a netted bag, still steaming from the warmth of the incubator, a thin stream of ooze dripping through the mesh.

  “A pupa?” Ezri asked. “You call them pupa?”