“Bring us to a full stop,” Tomalak told the two Breen. They looked at each other momentarily before turning to their consoles and working their controls. Around them, the sound of the ship changed, the drone of the engines deepening as Ren Fejin slowed. Likewise, the shuddering of the deck calmed.
When at last the bridge had completely quieted and stilled, Tomalak drew a disruptor pistol from the hem of his silver, broad-shouldered tunic. The Breen had virtually no time to react before he shot them down. Tomalak had no confidence that they would have kept their silence about the mission once they’d been taken into Federation custody.
Wasting no time, he rushed from the bridge and made his way to the ship’s engineering section. Kinn did not appear surprised even when Tomalak aimed his disruptor at the specialist and the other two Breen. Once he had ended the threat that they would reveal the nature of their mission to Starfleet, Tomalak encoded all the relevant information about that mission and transmitted it to Trok’s chief assistant, Keln, who would immediately pass it on to Sela. Tomalak looked forward to the time when the chairwoman would secure his release from Federation custody so that they could celebrate what would ultimately become their victory. He then took the time to destroy all of the cloaking equipment, and then to purge the ship’s logs.
It occurred to him to take his own life, but he trusted in his own ability to resist the interrogations of Federation authorities. Despite the attitudes of some Romulans, Tomalak found the prospect of an honorable death far less appealing than that of a dishonorable life. And he needed to remain alive, so that Sela could effect his eventual return to the Empire.
Instead, Tomalak deposited disruptor pistols in the hands of the four Breen and the Romulan specialist. He discarded his own weapon as he did so. He briefly lamented the loss of Trok, the Breen who had developed the methodology for creating and installing slipstream drive on Typhon Pact starships, but the engineer had not worked alone, and so surely Keln and other Breen would be able to renew his efforts.
His final tasks aboard Ren Fejin complete, Tomalak returned to the bridge and waited. He did not reply to any additional hails from the Defiant crew, but since the Breen ship no longer traveled at warp, and since it had no shields protecting it, he knew that the Starfleeters would not fire on him. Eventually, the bright white illumination of a Federation transporter beam appeared before his eyes.
Doctor Julian Bashir sat on the floor of what previously had been a corridor in one of the crossover bridges on Deep Space 9. No longer a part of the demolished station, the dim section of boxlike hull had become a lifeboat, carrying survivors of DS9’s destruction drifting through the sea of space. He and the twelve other people with him still awaited rescue, but he felt confident that such salvation would come.
Many lives clearly must have been lost, though, and it troubled Bashir that he had no idea whether Sarina had survived. After bombs had been discovered in the station’s reactor compartment, she had stopped by the infirmary on her way from the security office, saying that she just wanted to see him before she played her role in dealing with the crisis. She stayed for only a moment, but he could still feel the warm touch of her lips on his, could still hear the sweet sound of her words—I love you; be safe—in his ear.
Captain Ro had assigned Sarina, as a part of DS9’s security team, to help evacuate the station’s population—first civilians and then the crew. The captain tasked Bashir with safely relocating patients from the infirmary to Canterbury’s sickbay, so that they could then be taken to ground-based facilities on Bajor. Afterward, he too aided with the overall evacuation from Deep Space 9. But from the time Sarina left the infirmary, through the disintegration of the station, to the current moment, Bashir neither saw nor heard from her again.
Seated on the deck of the crossover segment, the doctor gazed from the emergency bulkhead at one end of the erstwhile corridor toward the emergency bulkhead at the other. Together, the thick metal doors held in heat and atmosphere, containing the small, habitable environment against the airless, pressureless nullity of space. The lighting panels in the overhead and the artificial-gravity grid embedded in the deck had failed with the loss of power, but emergency chemical lights provided indistinct, yellowish illumination, and a stash of harnesses in a crisis kit allowed people to secure themselves to the deck in a seated position.
All of the people there peered up at Bashir, obviously waiting for him to continue speaking. He knew that the six men, four women, and two children, all civilians, looked to him for leadership, for guidance and a sense of surety that rescue would indeed find them. He had tried to provide it by engaging the youngsters, a brother and sister, perhaps six and four years old, respectively, who had begun to grow restless and, he thought, scared. When the boy, Relev, had begun to ask when they could go home, the mother had looked to Bashir plaintively.
Bashir had related the tale of Beltese, a pylchyk—a Bajoran draft animal—and the farmer who used him to plow his fields. Each morning during one particular planting season, when he went to yoke up Beltese, the farmer found different shapes cut out of the grass, leaving behind various dirt figures. This perplexed the farmer. The only thing he could think of was that Beltese was eating the grass and making the geometric shapes, but pylchyks didn’t do such things.
“Finally all the plowing was finished,” Bashir continued. He noticed that the eyes, not just of the children and the mother, but of all the adults, had turned toward him. He had not intended to gather everybody’s attention with his telling of the old Bajoran fable, but he counted anything that took the castaways’ minds off their shared plight as positive. “The next day, the farmer was going to begin planting his katterpod crops, so he didn’t need the plow, but he decided to go out to the pasture anyway. Beltese was there, of course, but that morning, he was standing right beside the place where all the grass had been disappearing. And when he raised his head and looked over at the farmer, that old pylchyk was chewing a mouthful of grass.”
“He did do it,” yelped the little girl, Solay, clapping her hands together.
“Yes, he did,” Bashir agreed. “And the farmer gazed down at the dirt shapes, and he finally realized what he was seeing. The circle was B’hava’el, up in the sky. The triangle was a roof, and the square below it was a farmhouse. There were lines that formed fences, and other triangles that represented distant mountains in the background. And in the lower right-hand corner, rows of smaller shapes looked like katterpod plants in full bloom.
“Beltese had created a picture of the farmer’s land,” Bashir concluded.
“He was a smart pylchyk,” said Solay.
“Yes, Beltese was a smart pylchyk, and he was an artist,” Bashir said. “And that’s the point. The farmer thought Beltese was just a draft animal, and Beltese certainly was strong and very good at pulling a plow across a field. But he also was good at something else: making pictures.”
The mother put her hands on Relev’s shoulders and leaned in toward him. “Just like you can do different things,” she told her son. Whether or not she’d ever heard the story before, she evidently understood its message. “You can be a farmer and an artist, you can be a vedek and a champion swimmer. You don’t have to be just one thing, or even just two things. You can be whatever you want to be.”
“What about me, Mommy?” the little girl asked.
The mother reached out and took hold of her daughter’s hand. “You too, Solay,” she said. “You can be anything you want.”
Solay seemed to consider this for a moment, and then she declared, “I want to be a pylchyk.”
Bashir could not stop himself from laughing. Other people joined in, including the mother of the two children, who pulled her daughter to her and hugged her tightly. In such tense conditions, the jollity provided a welcome moment of relief.
Once the laughter had subsided, Relev said, “Tell us another story.”
“I think I’ve talked enough for right now,” Bashir said. In truth, something about th
e tale of Beltese had begun to gnaw at him.
“Ple-e-ase,” the boy said, stretching out the word.
“Now, Relev,” his mother chided him, “the doctor just told you a story. We need to let him take a break now.”
The boy looked down at the deck, plainly disappointed, but he did not protest his mother’s decision. For a moment, silence surrounded the group. Then, from the other end of the crossover segment, a voice said, “I know an old legend I can tell.” Bashir leaned to one side to peer past the other people. He saw a young, raven-haired Bajoran woman say, “It’s called ‘Home Are the Travelers.’”
Bashir had never heard of the story, but as all of his fellow castaways turned toward her, he saw no reason to question her choice, especially given its title. He listened as she began the tale, a bit haltingly at first, but then with more self-assurance as she continued. Before long, though, Bashir’s mind wandered from her oration and returned to Beltese. He had always heard the moral of that story rendered as some version of You can be more than merely one thing in your life, just as the mother had said. But another interpretation occurred to the doctor: Not everybody is who they appear to be.
A cynic might regard that less as a moral, Bashir thought, and more as a caution. He wondered why he’d selected that particular tale, and then attempted to convince himself that it had been a wholly random choice. But as Counselor Matthias or some other psychologists might insist, there are no accidents.
Bashir understood the thoughts trying to rise to the forefront of his mind. Two months earlier, Sarina had reported a conversation she’d overheard in which a fellow member of the crew, Ensign th’Shant, threatened revenge against the Federation for not doing enough to aid the Andorian people with their species-wide reproductive crisis, a perceived failure that had led directly to Andor’s secession from the UFP. Suspicion had fallen not just on th’Shant, though, but also on Sarina and DS9’s security chief, Jefferson Blackmer.
At the time, Bashir had vigorously defended Sarina, and indeed, after an investigation, she—as well as the other two officers—had been exculpated. Bashir knew that Sarina had previously worked for Starfleet Intelligence, and that during that time, she had been approached by Section 31. She had even agreed to conduct operations for the amoral, extralegal organization—but only for the ultimate purpose of exposing them and extinguishing their unseen, uncontrolled power.
Bashir knew all of that because Sarina herself had confessed it to him. After they completed their own mission for Starfleet Intelligence in the Breen Confederacy a year earlier, they decided to build a life together on Deep Space 9. Before long, Sarina admitted to Bashir her involvement with Section 31, its intention to utilize her to enlist him, and her goal of finding a means of bringing down the organization.
But she revealed all of that to him only under the strictest conditions, in which she could be certain that they would be neither seen nor heard by any of 31’s agents or devices. After that, they developed their own complex shorthand and shifting ciphers for use when discussing how the two of them could effect the end of Section 31. Even so, prudence dictated that they talk about such matters only occasionally.
The allegation of Sarina’s possible involvement in a terrorist plot against the Federation—and more specifically, against DS9—had therefore troubled him greatly. Bashir knew that she not only served Starfleet loyally, but that she risked everything in working furtively to put a stop to Section 31. He also loved her, and therefore resented any suggestion of criminal or immoral behavior on her part.
But, looking back over the past two months, the investigation of Sarina troubled him even more. She had been cleared, and for that, he had been grateful, and maybe even relieved, though he had never conceded, even to himself, that he harbored any doubts about her innocence. In the wake of Deep Space 9’s destruction, though, he finally asked himself the question he hadn’t been able to after the investigation: why had Sarina been cleared?
For in truth, she had worked for Section 31—and still did. Nobody but Bashir knew the reasons for her involvement with the clandestine organization, and so her membership in it should have raised serious concerns. He could only figure that the investigation had not discovered her association with the group.
But that raises another question, Bashir thought. What else remained undiscovered about Sarina? In the terms of the story of Beltese, how many roles was she playing?
Bashir shook his head, as if that might clear it and dispel his concerns. He felt disgusted for even allowing himself to doubt Sarina. How could he possibly entertain such thoughts about the woman he loved? He’d waited his entire life for Sarina, and then once he’d found her, he’d ended up having to wait nearly another seven years for them to be together. If he couldn’t trust her, if he couldn’t place his full and unmitigated faith in her, then how could their relationship possibly endure?
Except that I can’t be sure if we even still have a relationship, Bashir thought. I don’t know if Sarina’s alive. Once more, the possibility of her death filled him with dread. At that moment, he wanted more than anything to see Sarina’s beautiful face, to hold her in his embrace again, to feel the delicate pressure of her lips as they kissed.
With an effort, Bashir forced himself to abandon such thoughts. As the lone Starfleet officer in the crossover segment, he knew that he needed to focus on the dozen people for whom he had become responsible. To help him do that, he chose to concentrate on the voice of the young woman relating the Bajoran legend.
Just a few seconds later, though, Bashir heard something else. A hum rose in the enclosed space, a recognizable drone that in that moment sounded to the doctor like music. He watched with a mixture of joy and relief as the surroundings began to fade, replaced an indefinable amount of time later by another place entirely.
Bashir pushed himself up to his feet from a large, rectangular transporter platform. He saw at once that he had been transported to a cargo hold, several Starfleet officers crewing a console across the compartment. He peered around at the people with whom he’d been set adrift, tallying their number as they stood up to make sure that everybody had been recovered. As he counted to twelve, the mother of the two children caught his eye.
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said.
Bashir smiled in response. Then he felt a tug at his pant leg. He looked down to see Relev staring up at him. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” echoed Solay.
Bashir lowered himself to his haunches before the two children. “You are both most welcome,” he said.
“Julian?” The voice came from the front of the transporter pad. Even before Bashir rose back to his feet, even before he turned to see Sarina, tears pooled in his eyes. When he saw her—dressed in her Starfleet uniform, smudges of dirt on her knees, her long, light-brown hair pinned up but tousled—he sprinted down the steps to the deck and threw his arms around her.
“Sarina,” he said, and he could almost taste the sound of her name on his lips. “You’re all right.” He intended the words as a simple statement, but they came out more as an earnest plea.
“I’m fine,” she said, and she pulled back to face him, her hands on his shoulders, his on her waist. “I was in the docking ring when the emergency bulkheads closed,” she said. “Like you, I was trapped in there, but safe, when the station broke apart. The Canterbury recovered us.” She looked about the cargo hold, indicating that they presently stood on the Galaxy-class starship. “Captain Ro is leading the rescue effort aboard the Rio Grande.”
“The captain survived?” Bashir said, surprised by the news, but pleased.
Sarina nodded. “A lot of people have,” she said. “There were about twenty-two hundred left on the station when . . .” She could not finish her sentence—or chose not to. “So far, including your twelve, we’ve saved five hundred forty-seven of them from pieces of wreckage that were protected by the emergency bulkheads, and that managed to survive the breakup of the station.”
>
Sarina took a step back and inspected Bashir. “Are you all right?”
“A few bumps and bruises,” he said, “but nothing major.”
“Not everybody’s been as fortunate,” Sarina said. “There are quite a few broken bones, as well as a number of head traumas. If you’re up to it, I’m sure the Canterbury’s CMO could use some assistance in sickbay.”
“Of course,” Bashir said. “I’ll head there straightaway.” But he didn’t move. He stood there and gazed at Sarina, ecstatic that he had not lost the woman who meant everything to him. He stepped forward and swept his arms around her once more. “I love you,” he whispered into her ear as her arms encircled him.
“I love you,” she whispered back.
Finally, they let each other go. Bashir turned and headed for the cargo hold’s doors, on his way to Canterbury’s sickbay. He did not think once about the doubts he’d begun to form about Sarina.
Enterprise dropped out of warp, slowing to impulse speed as the ship entered the Idran system. Captain Jean-Luc Picard sat in the command chair on the bridge and watched the main viewscreen, anxious for the light show that awaited. While he knew that he would appreciate the spectacle of the next leg of his ship’s journey, he simply wanted to return to Federation space.
“We’re approaching the threshold,” announced Lieutenant Joanna Faur from her position at the conn.
“All ship’s systems ready for the traversal,” said Lieutenant Jasminder Choudhury. The ship’s chief of security, she crewed the tactical station.
“As soon as we arrive, Lieutenant Faur,” Picard said, “take us in.”
“Aye, sir,” returned Faur.
As he waited, Picard glanced down and to his right, to where his first officer sat. Commander Worf peered back at him. Betraying nothing via any sort of facial expression, Worf leaned toward Picard and asked, sotto voce, “Are you all right, Captain?”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 5
