Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  Last night, we had an army of about three hundred. This morning, I counted one hundred sixty. The rest have seen what was going to happen and melted away into the forest. Wise, wise Ingavi…

  They were watching me just a little while ago, waiting to see what I do to prepare myself. When I pulled out this tricorder, they left me alone. This, they must think, is what I do, and I suppose they’re right. This is what I always did just before going on a mission with the Maquis. Everyone did it—left a will or, at least, a list of things you wanted divided up among your friends. I would do that now, but who would I leave anything to? All my friends from the Maquis are gone and there’s no one back on Deep Space 9 that I feel any compulsion…

  Well, wait, yes there is. Whoever finds this, please tell Colonel Kira to search the mainframe in the security office very carefully. I found some things in it that she might find useful someday. Oh, and if anyone finds my…my things, please give the fractal blade to Taran’atar. He’s the only person I know who might appreciate it.

  I’m going to attack Locken’s fortress with about one hundred sixty Ingavi, most of whom are armed with slings, blowguns, and spears. A few of them have phasers and disruptors. It’s not much…hell, it’s not anything really, but if we can slow down Locken even a little, it might give Bashir and Dax a chance, assuming they’re still alive. And if we can help them, maybe it will help the Ingavi. If you’re

  Starfleet, try to find the Ingavi and help them. They might not make it easy—they don’t owe us any trust—but do what you can.

  One last request. If I’m found dead…please, take my bones back to Bajor.

  This is Lieutenant Ro Laren, chief security officer of Starbase Deep Space 9, over and out.

  “This is going much too well,” Ro whispered to Kel.

  The Ingavi, hanging upside down from a vine at that moment and looking over Ro’s shoulder, shrugged, then suggested that Ro might not want to say anything that would endanger their good fortune. “There are always ears willing to listen to complaints of too much luck. What would you like us to do next?”

  They were within seven hundred meters of the outer wall of the compound and, as anticipated, they had encountered opposition, but the Jem’Hadar they had fought were nothing like the soldiers Taran’atar had combated.

  “How many soldiers have we killed so far?”

  “Eight.”

  “Then we missed one. They usually patrol in three groups of three. He’s either still on patrol or he’s heard us and gone back to the base for reinforcements.”

  Kel asked, “If the latter, then why haven’t we been attacked?”

  Ro shook her head. “I don’t know. Something strange is happening. How many Jem’Hadar have your people managed to defeat in the past?”

  Kel hooted sardonically. “One or two. Maybe. No one ever stayed long enough to check. Believe me, we are as aware as you are that there is something wrong here.”

  “Could it be a trap?” Ro asked.

  “Baiting a trap with one or two trained soldiers, maybe—but eight? Unless this Khan has bred thousands upon thousands—and we would know it if he had—there is something wrong with them. My people say they fight as if in a dream…if Jem’Hadar do dream.”

  “They don’t,” Ro said, running another scan of the forest before them. The missing ninth soldier was bothering her. “You can’t dream if you don’t sleep.”

  From above, there came a soft hiss and Kel scampered up the vine he had been hanging from. Looking up, Ro barely made out a pair of figures huddled together exchanging words.

  Moments later, Kel dropped down again and the other Ingavi climbed higher into the treetops. “We found him,” Kel reported. “The ninth Jem’Hadar.”

  “And?”

  “He was asleep.”

  “What?”

  “He was asleep. Standing at guard, gun drawn, with his eyes closed. When my soldiers approached him, his eyes opened, but by then it was too late. Even at the last, he did not seem to understand what was happening.”

  Ro was baffled, but she didn’t want to waste the opportunity. “All right, they’ll notice the guards not reporting in soon enough. We can’t assume this stupor is going to last. Tell your people we may still have a fight on our hands.”

  “I’ll ask everyone to move up, then,” Kel said, already heading back up the vine. “See you soon.”

  What a polite army I have, Ro thought. “I’ll ask everyone to move up.” She laughed quietly, the first real laugh Ro remembered having in days. She fished her binoculars out of her bag and trained them on the forest even though they weren’t much use in the dense foliage. Even the infrared setting was flummoxed by the shifting bands of hot and cool air being pushed around by the treetop breezes.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Ro asked herself. And why couldn’t she shake the feeling that Bashir was somehow behind it all?

  “Bashir,” Locken whispered through clenched teeth, stalking down the corridor from the main lab to his quarters. “It must be Bashir.” Too many things were going wrong all at the same time. First, even as he was preparing the new cloning chambers, came word that the Trill had escaped. The security logs showed that the forcefield had been opened with some kind of electromagnetic pulse. And now there was something wrong with his Jem’Hadar, something to do with the white. The tests showed traces of a foreign substance, tainting it, making the soldiers sluggish. There was the puzzle of how the Trill had managed to get into the lab and Locken cursed himself for not taking internal security more seriously. Clearly he had underestimated Dax and Bashir both.

  At least he had been suspicious enough to keep Bashir in his personal suite of rooms. If he had been allowed into the laboratory, there was no telling what kind of damage he might have done. The computers in his quarters, especially the units that controlled the missile launch mechanism, were protected by the most complex encryption programs he could conceive. Bashir might be clever, but he was no match for Locken’s genius with coding.

  And yet…

  Locken stopped at the next check station and inspected the two Jem’Hadar who were on guard duty. One had the same glazed, numb expression he had seen on many of the other soldiers, but the second seemed alert, even eager. “You,” Locken said. “You’re feeling all right?”

  The Jem’Hadar responded promptly. “Ready to serve, my Khan.”

  Locken nodded, noting the sputtering tube in the soldier’s neck. Maybe the contaminant hadn’t dispersed evenly through the white supply. Some of his men might still be as healthy as this one. He would find out after he’d dealt with the good doctor. “Come with me,” he said, and the Jem’Hadar fell in smartly behind him. “We’re going to my quarters. There will be a human there. Don’t kill him until I order you to do so. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Locken found Bashir precisely where he expected to find him: stooping over the master command console. His hands were flying over the controls, his brow furrowed with frustration.

  “Stand away, Julian,” Locken ordered.

  Bashir’s hands froze, but he didn’t step away from the console.

  “Soldier,” Locken snapped. “Aim your weapon. If he doesn’t move in three seconds, shoot him.” The Jem’Hadar’s rifle rose instantly and was pointed unwaveringly at Bashir’s head.

  Bashir lifted his hands off the console and took two steps back. “Over against the wall,” Locken said. Bashir complied. It was hard to read his expression and that worried Locken, so he moved to the command console, entered his codes, and ran a quick diagnostic on the missile firing system. While the diagnostic ran, he checked the command system for viruses or other less elegant forms of sabotage.

  Both checks reported finding nothing amiss. The command system was clean and the missile delivery system had not been tampered with. Locken almost laughed. Bashir must have had less time to work than Locken had assumed, or, possibly, he wasn’t quite as clever as Locken had once suspected. “That was really fool
ish, Julian,” he said. “All you’ve succeeded in doing is killing the inhabitants of the Orias system a little sooner.” He keyed the launch code and activated the firing sequence. “I was going to do this after we had some breakfast, maybe a glass or two of ambrosia, but, well, sometimes it’s best to do things without ceremony.”

  Locken punched up the exterior cameras and turned them toward the missile silo. The top of the silo opened, and, seconds later, a slim, matte black shape came forth on a point of blue-white flame that cut through the night sky. It rose swiftly, gained speed at an astonishing rate, then disappeared into the east.

  “Honestly,” Locken said. “I expected better of you. If you insisted on being my nemesis instead of my ally, the least you could have done was make it interesting. This was hardly worth getting out of bed for.” He shrugged. “Well, at least we have the hunt for your little pet slug-girl to look forward to. Seeing as she managed to accomplish more than you did just by poisoning my Jem’Hadar…”

  The barb did not seem to sting Bashir as much as he had expected. In fact, despite the implicit threat to someone Locken knew full well was dear to Julian, his captive looked not just unperturbed, but positively pleased with himself.

  “I have to admit,” Bashir said, “that the encryption on the missile console was more than I could handle…”

  Locken nodded, graciously accepting the compliment.

  “…but it was surprisingly easy to alter the orbit of the weapons platform.”

  It seemed to Locken that the universe became frozen in amber. His muscles, his memory, his mind, all were immobilized for exactly the span of time it required for everything, everything he had been planning to begin to tip forward, to crumble, to topple into the void that had just opened beneath his feet. There came a voice—whining, cajoling, exhorting—why hadn’t he been a little quicker, a little more clever, a little tougher…

  He was five again and there was the ring of faces standing around him, the boys who had taunted him for being slow, for being stupid. And here again was the desire to hurt them, to make them pay for what they said, except…except…he hadn’t known how to do it…He was slow. He was stupid…

  …And then time, stretched as far as it could, snapped back again. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were moving over the console, flying, his fingers a blur of motion, checking the sensors, checking the telemetry of the weapons platform, sending the disable code, but, no, somehow Bashir, damn him, had anticipated every move. The platform wouldn’t do what he asked, though it did allow him to see Sindorin with its onboard cameras. Here came the missile, arcing up silently from the planet’s surface, its blue-white flame bright against the black of space, unfettered, unstoppable, and then there came a dazzling flash of ruby light.

  Then there was nothing, not even a trail of fragments.

  Locken imagined what he hadn’t been able to see: an explosion that consumed the missile and its biological payload, a chain reaction of blown power systems that was, even now, ripping his weapons platform apart. Locken stared at the monitor, stared and waited for some kind of meaning to emerge, but there was nothing. It was only space, only the void, only an abyss.

  Behind him, he heard Bashir say, “It’s over, Locken.”

  Locken composed himself and turned toward Bashir. He willed himself to remain calm, then slowly reached up and turned off the blank monitor. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Julian. This was nothing. A minor setback, at best. I admit it—this stings, but that’s all it is. A bug bite. I’ll scratch it and by the time I’m finished, I’ll have a new missile and a new payload. The Romulans on Orias III will live to see a couple more sunrises.” He turned to look at Bashir. “But that won’t mean anything to you, Julian. You won’t be here to see it.”

  Bashir sighed. “Maybe,” he said. “But I expect you won’t be far behind me. You really don’t get it, do you? You think you’re so bloody intelligent, that you’re always pulling everyone else’s strings, but you haven’t seen that you’re really the puppet. This whole war—this decision to ‘unite the Alpha Quadrant’—it wasn’t your idea.”

  He stared at Locken as if waiting for comprehension to dawn, but Locken only stared at him blankly. Bashir shook his head, massaged the bridge of his nose, then continued. “During your time with Section 31, did you ever meet a man named Cole?”

  Locken felt off-balance and found that he could not refuse to answer. “No. Who is he? And why should I care?”

  “He’s the one who sent me to stop you,” Bashir said, then confidently walked back into the living area. Locken wondered if Bashir was going to try to make a run for it, then decided if he did, he would let him have a bit of a head start. It would make things more interesting. Bashir stopped in front of the small table that held the holo of the medical staff at the New Beijing Pediatric Center and pointed at the figure of Murdoch, Locken’s friend and mentor. “That’s him.”

  “You’re lying,” Locken said, a little too quickly.

  “Am I?” Bashir asked. “Consider this: The Dominion was supposed to have obtained erroneous intelligence that New Beijing was producing biogenic weapons. But where did that information come from? I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands lately, and here’s what I believe: Section 31 wanted you badly. They desperately wanted an enhanced agent and since I’d already turned them down, they turned to you.”

  Locken felt himself begin to snarl, but then realized that Bashir was trying to make him angry, trying to make him make a mistake. He glanced to the right and saw that his Jem’Hadar was still tracking Bashir with his weapon, awaiting the kill order. Locken grinned.

  “So, they assigned Cole to New Beijing,” Bashir continued. “He obviously had some kind of medical training, enough at least to fool you and the others. As Dr. Murdoch, Cole had time to assess you and the colony. When he finished his assessment, he conceived a plan. He fed information to the Dominion that would guarantee they’d come in with weapons blazing, then made sure that the colony’s defenses were disabled before he found a deep enough hole to crawl into until his ride home arrived.”

  “You don’t—you can’t—know if any of this is true.”

  “No, I don’t,” Bashir agreed. “But it all does fit, doesn’t it? Even you can see that. Even you can see that Section 31 sacrificed five thousand men, women, and children—Federation lives—just so they could convince you to join their little crusade. They wanted that fantastic mind of yours working for them; it didn’t matter how they got it. And all they had to do was let you think it was your crusade.”

  “No…” Locken said hoarsely.

  “Yes,” Bashir replied, his tone now quiet, even sympathetic. “You said it yourself: New Beijing changed everything. As much as you might have thought about it, you never would have done anything like this before. Think about it, Ethan: a missile…a disease-laden missile. Genetically engineered soldiers. What have you become? You were a doctor.” He let the words hang in the air for several seconds, then concluded, “But now you’re their creature, their monster…. And I’ve been looking so hard to pry into your head, to try to think like you so I could stop you, that I almost convinced myself I was like you.” Bashir rubbed the cuff of his sleeve over his eyes and Locken was surprised to see that his eyes were wet with tears.

  “I want you to listen to me now, Ethan,” Bashir continued. “It’s still not too late. You wanted us to work together, and we can still do that. We could stop them, the two of us, bring Section 31 to justice. We can make sure they never again…”

  Though Bashir could not have known it by any outward sign, Locken quickly and coolly processed all the possible outcomes that could be borne out of the option of joining forces with the Federation and crushing Section 31. It was a tantalizing prospect and offered, if nothing else, the twin pleasures of companionship and revenge. If he went with Julian, he would, Locken knew, have to undergo some form of discipline and punishment, but he als
o knew that Starfleet would not be permitted to parade him before a public tribunal. Word would never be allowed to leak out either about Section 31 or the attacks on the Romulans. He would be allowed to pursue vengeance and then, probably, be put somewhere out of the way. He might even be allowed to continue his research, to find new ways to help children, which was, in the end, the thing he wanted most to do….

  But Locken knew too that they would never, ever leave him alone. Already, he felt their gaze on him, their prying eyes, their meddlesome, ever-vigilant cow-eyed scrutiny. He closed his eyes and felt the blank, uncomprehending stares, and, worse, the tiny, smug smiles for the would-be conqueror. Something inside him crumbled and withered. It was more than he could stand; he deserved better.

  But he didn’t know how to say any of it, so instead he let the fear and anger speak for him. “The quadrant,” he said, “the galaxy, still needs order. When people learn what I’ve been doing here, they’ll flock to my cause. I’ll deal with Section 31 in my own good time.”

  Bashir looked up at his flag, Khan Singh’s flag, the merged sun and moon symbol dominating one wall of the room, and sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you are just like Khan, after all.” He caught Locken’s gaze with his own and for the first time, Locken felt the power of the fury Bashir had been holding in check. “A deluded failure.”

  Locken flushed with loathing and finally turned to the Jem’Hadar guard, giving the order through clenched teeth: “Kill him.”

  The Jem’Hadar didn’t move.

  Locken screamed at him. “I gave you an order, guard!”

  The guard turned to look Locken in the eyes. “My name,” he said, “is Taran’atar.”

  One hundred meters from Locken’s front door, it finally turned into a real fight. Either someone had roused the troops or all the wide-awake Jem’Hadar were just inside the front doors. Whichever it was, the bulk of the Ingavi troops were pinned down in the lee of a low hill. They were keeping their heads low and that meant the majority of the shots weren’t dangerous, but every tenth or fifteenth bolt came at just the right angle and Ro heard an Ingavi die. She knew it was only a matter of minutes before the Jem’Hadar shrouded themselves, moved out to better positions, and caught them in a cross fire.